^ 


GUY  HAMILTON  SCULL 


^ea*l*s----rr55 


Guy  Hamilton  Scull 

SOLDIER,  WRITER, 
EXPLORER  AND  WAR 
CORRESPONDENT 


Compiled  and  with  an  Introduction 

By 
HENRY  JAY  CASE 


New  York 

DUFFIELD  &  COMPANY 

1922 


Copyright  1922,  by 
DUFFIELD    &    COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


-/Sto471 


To 

Guy  and  David  Scull 

this  book  is 
affectionately  dedicated 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Acknowledgments ix 

Introduction xi 

I.    Ancestry 1 

II,    Boyhood  and  School  Days 8 

III.    Harvard,   1894-1898 t6 

IV.    The  Rough  Riders,  1898 31 

V.    Boer  War,   1900 45 

VI.    Newspaper  and  Magazine  Work,  1898-1901    .  60 

VII.    Venezuela,  1901 80 

VIII.    Balkans,    1903 88 

IX.    Manchuria,    1904-1905 106 

X.    Russia,    1906 131 

XI.    The  Loss  of  the  Mayflower,  1908        .      .      .  148 

XII.    New  York  City  Police  Dept.,  1908-1909         .  159 

XIII.  Nairobi,    1910 174 

XIV.  Mexican  Border,  1910 197 

XV.    Nicaragua,  1912 209 

XVI.    New  York  City  Police  Dept.,  1914-1917  .      .  217 

XVII.    The  World's  War,  1918-1920 248 

XVIII.    Cedarhurst,  1920 263 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

OPPOSITE 
PAGE 

Gut  Hamilton  Scull Frontispiece 

Beverly  Farms,   1886 6 

Harvard  Freshman  Year,  1895 16 

Harvard  Freshman  Crew,  1896 26 

Harvard,   1898 32 

The  Rough  Riders,  1898 40 

Facsimile  Letter  (From  Theodore  Roosevelt)       .      .  52 

Hunting  Trouble  in  the  Balkans 90 

Bulgarian  Troops   (The  Fourth  Mountain   Battery)  94 

Manchuria,   1904 120 

The  Wreck  of  the  Mayflower,  1908 152 

Nairobi,  1910  (Roping  a  Rhinoceros) 174 

1910 196 

Deputy  Police  Commissioner,   1917 220 

Northeast  Harbor,  September,  1917 230 

Police  Commissioner  Arthur  Woods  and  His  Staff    .  244 

Washington,    1918 258 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Thanks  and  acknowledgments  are  due  to  the  fol- 
lowing friends  who  have  written  accounts  of  their  per- 
sonal experiences  with  Guy  Scull,  which  have  been 
incorporated  in  the  various  chapters  of  the  book: 

To  Eliot  Wadsworth,  Charles  Jackson  and  Charles 
P.  Greenough  for  their  contributions  to  "Boyhood 
and  School  Days." 

To  Bartlett  H.  Hayes,  Nicholas  Biddle,  Carl 
Hovey  and  Mrs.  Owen  Wister  for  their  contributions 
to  "Harvard." 

To  J.  Pennington  Gardiner  for  his  contribution  to 
"The  Rough  Riders." 

To  George  d'Utassy  and  James  Barnes  for  their 
contributions  to  "Boer  War." 

To  Lincoln  Steffens,  Carl  Hovey,  Abraham  Cahan, 
C.  A.  Lachaussee  and  Larkin  G.  Mead  for  their 
contributions  to  "Newspaper  and  Magazine  Work." 

To  George  d'Utassy,  Dr.  W.  E.  Aughinbaugh 
and  James  H.  Hare  for  their  contributions  to 
"Venezuela— 1901." 

To  Larkin  G.  Mead,  Martin  Egan  and  Franklin 
Clarkin  for  their  contributions  to  "Manchuria — 1904- 
1905." 

To  Roger  A.  Derby  for  his  contribution  to  "The 
Loss  of  the  Mavflower— 1908." 


xii  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

To  Arthur  A.  Fowler  and  Captain  Sir  William 
Maxwell  for  their  contributions  to  "Nairobi — 1910." 

To  Marshall  Eberstein  and  Robert  Welles  Ritchie 
for  their  contributions  to  "Mexican  Border — 1910." 

To  Colonel  Arthur  Woods,  Dr.  Jeremiah  W. 
Jenks,  Detective-Sergeant  George  Trojan,  Detec- 
tive-Sergeant James  Brennan,  Detective- Sergeant 
James  Finn,  Inspector  John  J.  Cray,  Inspector 
Thomas  J.  Tunney  and  Captain  William  A.  Jones 
for  their  contributions  to  "Ncav  York  City  Police 
Department— 1908-1909." 

To  Major  G.  Quincy  Peters,  Captain  Buehler 
Metcalfe  and  Major  Ralph  Smith  for  their  contribu- 
tions to  "The  World's  War." 

To  Mrs.  Robert  M.  Derby  for  her  contribution  to 
"Cedarhurst." 

To  the  following  who  have  been  of  the  greatest  help 
in  furnishing  additional  data  and  recollections  which 
have  been  used  throughout  the  book: 

Major  General  Leonard  Wood,  David  M.  Good- 
rich, Frank  A.  Lord,  Samuel  L.  Fuller,  Granville 
Fortescue,  Humphrey  Nichols  and  Langdon  P. 
Marvin. 


INTRODUCTION 

Most  biographies  are  written  from  private  papers 
or  correspondence,  or  from  an  intimate  personal 
knowledge  of  the  subject's  life.  Guy  Scull  never  kept 
a  journal  or  a  diary  and  he  did  not  preserve  much 
in  the  way  of  correspondence.  Such  letters  of  his  as 
were  kept  by  others  are  decidedly  brief  and  cast  little 
or  no  light  on  either  his  thoughts  or  activities.  The 
only  person  apparently  to  whom  he  wrote  regularly 
was  his  mother  and  these  letters,  dated  from  all  quar- 
ters of  the  globe,  are  limited  for  the  most  part  to 
deep  assurances  of  his  affection,  laconic  sentences  that 
his  'health  was  good  and  commands  that  she  should 
not  worry.  There  is  no  one  friend  left  among  the 
many  he  had  that  knew  all  of  his  wanderings  and 
adventures,  where  he  was  or  what  he  was  doing,  or 
indeed  the  many  fascinating  sides  of  his  unusual  char- 
acter. So  what  follows  is  in  no  way  a  biography  or 
can  it  even  be  called  a  sketch.  It  is  only  a  collection 
of  stories,  incidents  and  impressions  obtained  from 
associates  and  comrades  of  Scull  in  many  of 
his  explorations  and  adventures.  He  rarely 
talked  of  his  adventures.  He  talked  very  little 
at  any  time.  The  few  exceptions  were  the 
golden  hours  known  to  a  very  few  when  in  the 
comer  of  the  Harvard  Club  or  some  cafe  tucked  away 
in  an  obscure  corner  of  the  city,  his  mood  right,  and 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

someone  spinning  a  yam  that  touched  a  hidden  chord 
deep  within  him,  there  would  come  from  him  tales 
of  adventure,  short,  powerful  paragraphs,  crammed 
with  human  interest,  humor,  pathos,  tragedy,  painted 
as  no  one  but  he  could  do  it.  Certainly  no  one  but 
a  man  who  had  played  a  part  in  them  could  have 
held  the  attention  as  he  did.  Yet  no  one  ever  heard 
him  use  the  first  personal  pronoun.  He  did  not  know 
it.  This  modesty  and  humility  from  a  man  who  had 
lived  through  what  he  had  was  one  of  the  things  that 
drew  others  to  him.  Wherever  he  was  there  was 
always  a  group  around  him.  For  all  his  taciturn 
nature  he  liked  the  company  of  others.  Firm  even 
to  the  point  of  rudeness,  he  was  a  leader. 

"Skipper's"  tales  were  told  in  the  drinking  days 
when  it  wasn't  breaking  the  laws  to  put  one's  legs 
under  the  same  table  that  held  one's  glass.  His  legs 
were  long  and  he  liked  a  big  table  and  while  there 
was  always  a  goodly  crowd  of  worshippers  sitting 
around  it  no  one  ever  thought  of  using  notebook 
or  paper  with  a  view  to  perpetuating  those  yarns. 
Perish  the  thought!  The  table  held  other  things 
equally  perishable.  Those  wonderful  tales  are  gone. 
Only  a  memory  of  a  man  remains.  Only  those  close 
friends,  men  in  widely  different  walks  of  life,  now 
realize  what  that  loss  means  to  contemporaneous  his- 
tory, romance  and  adventure.  We  who  today  would 
attempt  to  set  down  a  story  of  his  life  have  to  rely 
upon  those  who  played  a  part  with  him  in  this  or  that 
adventure.     We  acknowledge  our  debt  to  them  for 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

what  they  can  remember  of  him  and  of  what  was  told 
about  him. 

From  college  days  on  Scull  was  beset  with  strong 
temptation  to  drink  and  with  this  temptation  he  had 
an  up  and  down  fight  over  a  long  period  of  years.  It 
was  usually  during  the  intervals  between  work  that 
he  gave  way  to  it.  When  engaged  in  important  work 
he  was  often  a  strict  teetotaler.  After  he  was  married 
and  towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  got  this  temptation 
under  control,  as  he  always  knew  he  could,  and  proved 
it  for  years  at  a  time.  The  last  years  of  his  life  he 
completely  mastered  this  temptation. 

Many  pet  phrases  are  credited  to  Scull.  "It  ought 
to  be,  but  it  ain't"  is  one  of  them.  He  never  assumed 
anything  to  be  so.  He  reasoned  from  facts  and  more 
than  one  burst  of  eloquence  has  been  completely 
s-topped  by  this  dry  Down  East  drawl  coming  from 
Scull.  He  probably  often  said  of  hhnself,  "It  ought 
to  be,  but  it  ain't." 

Office  routine  bored  him;  anything  regular  irri- 
tated him.  He  worked  day  and  night  at  any  task 
which  appealed  to  him.  Hours  meant  nothing.  In 
his  official  life  he  rebelled  against  red  tape  and  fought 
it  consistently.  To  superiors  and  subordinates  he  was 
honest  and  scrupulous  to  a  degree  and  he  demanded 
the  same  thing  from  everyone  with  whom  he  dealt. 
He  hated  a  crook  and  a  grafter  with  a  hate  that  few 
even  of  his  most  intimate  friends  appreciated.  Hon- 
esty, the  truth  and  integrity  were  almost  a  religion 
to  him.    He  was  ever  trying  to  help  some  under  dog, 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

trying  to  boost  an  unfortunate,  trying  to  give  some- 
body a  lift.  Major  General  Leonard  Wood  said  of 
hini,  that  fearless  and  enterprising  as  he  was  and  with 
that  wealth  of  romance  in  his  make-up,  he  would,  had 
he  been  born  in  an  earlier  age,  have  found  his  way 
into  one  of  the  bands  of  explorers,  pioneers  or  colo- 
nizers which  were  opening  up  a  ncAv  world. 

He  was  never  happier  than  when  using  his  wits 
and  his  strength  in  some  stiff  problem  that  had  defied 
others.  From  boyhood  he  took  a  savage  joy  in 
matching  his  remarkable  constitution  against  expo- 
sure to  the  weather.  He  deliberately  risked  his  life 
on  several  different  occasions  without  a  thought  of  the 
result  and  from  each  of  these  amazing  adventures 
he  would  emerge  the  same  silent  person,  a  little  more 
grim  and  a  little  more  restless,  to  be  off  again  on  some 
other  expedition  away  from  the  conventional  life  and 
the  comfortable  existence  into  which  he  was  bom  and 
bred. 

Only  his  intimates  knew  his  love  for  music.  He 
studied  it  as  a  boy.  His  parents  were  rigid  in  holding 
him  to  his  practice  hours  and  his  devotion  to  music 
held  strong  through  his  college  days  and  into  later 
life.  He  took  much  pleasure  in  playing  his  'cello 
or  in  drumming  out  chords  on  the  piano  to  accom- 
pany ballads  which  he  sung.  Several  of  these  ballads 
he  set  to  music  himself  and  one,  "Gentlemen  Rank- 
ers," is  sung  today  to  Scull's  own  music.  His  love 
for  music  was  the  means  of  getting  him  a  line  in  the 
international  news  dispatches  when  Richard  Hard- 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

ing  Davis  described  Scull's  appearance  as  a  war  cor- 
respondent at  General  Buller's  headquarters  in  the 
opening  of  the  Boer  War  dressed  as  a  tramp  and 
with  his  campaign  equipment  limited  to  a  toothbrush 
and  a  banjo  improvised  from  a  cigar  box. 

This  love  for  music  and  a  desire  to  write  were  two 
things  that  even  his  closest  friends  could  not  easily 
associate  with  the  other  and  more  outstanding  traits 
in  his  nature.  Somehow  to  them  they  did  not  mix 
with  the  more  rugged  and  adventurous  side  of  his 
make-up.  They  had  no  part  in  a  character  that  re- 
velled in  the  slow,  arduous  toil  of  unraveling  a  mur- 
der myster}'^ ;  which  led  him  five  thousand  miles  to  get 
into  a  blood-letting  war,  or  an  equal  distance  to  match 
his  strength  against  tropical  fever,  wild  animals, 
poisonous  insects  and  reptiles.  Yet  this  desire  for 
literary  expression  was  to  Scull  almost  a  passion.  He 
always  wanted  to  write,  more  than  he  ever  wanted  to 
do  anything  else,  and  those  who  were  competent  to 
judge  predicted  great  things  of  him  in  the  future. 
He  could  write.  As  a  senior  at  Harvard  his  first 
attempt  met  with  instant  approval  and  acceptance  by 
magazine  editors,  and  while  the  hack  work  on  the  big 
dailies  proved  irksome,  his  work  there  was  marked  by 
many  brilliant  contributions  and  his  first  attempt  as 
a  war  correspondent  in  the  South  African  war 
jumped  him  into  fame  as  a  descriptive  writer.  One 
of  his  letters  was  used  as  an  example  of  pure  En- 
glish for  classes  at  Harvard  University.  But  as  he 
was  industrious  in  his  work  of  writing  so  was  he  «by 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

with  editors  and  publishers.  This  reserve  grew  into 
sensitiveness  and  the  action  of  one  publishing  house 
in  begging  off  from  a  contract  after  his  return  from 
South  Africa  finally  so  upset  him  that  he  stopped 
writing  as  a  regular  occupation  for  several  years  and 
did  not  take  it  up  again  until  after  his  wedding  in 
his  fortieth  year  and  during  his  second  term  in  the 
New  York  City  Police  Department.  Two  sons  were 
bom  to  him  and  from  a  wanderer  and  an  adventurer 
he  became  such  a  home  body  that  it  took  an  unusual 
case  at  Headquarters  to  break  into  his  domestic  regu- 
larity and  drag  him  away  from  his  home  after  office 
hours.  He  seemed  never  happier  than  when  with 
his  small  family.  When  one  of  the  children  fell  ill 
he  was  the  first  to  insist  that  he  should  stand  watch 
and  even  after  a  hard  day's  work  if  a  child  was  ailing 
he  would  insist  upon  sitting  by  the  youngster's  crib 
and  ministering  to  it. 

It  was  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  that  his  wife 
aroused  again  his  interest  in  writing  and  they  were 
laying  out  this  work  to  do  in  their  home  at  Cedar- 
hurst  when  a  small  and  seemingly  harmless  affliction 
came  and  suddenly  without  warning  struck  him  down, 
down. 

What  follows  is  not  a  story  of  a  successful  man  in 
statesmanship,  letters  or  trade.  The  excuse  for  the 
book  is  the  memory  of  a  cultured  American,  human, 
uncomplaining,  unselfish,  whose  greatest  content- 
ment lay  where  the  battle  was  the  hardest  and  the 
risk  all  his  own.  H.  J,  C. 


GUY  HAMILTON  SCULL 


GUY   HAMILTON  SCULL 

Chapter  I 

ANCESTRY 

On  both  paternal  and  maternal  sides  for  several 
generations  the  Sculls  come  of  English  stock.  Ann 
Seller,  Guy's  mother,  was  Swiss  and  her  maternal 
ancestors  German.  Nicholas  and  John  Scull  came 
to  America  in  the  ship  Bristol  Merchant,  sailing  from 
Bristol,  England,  on  September  10,  1665.  John 
Scull  settled  with  his  wife,  Mary,  at  Great  Egg  Har- 
bor, Province  of  New  Jersey,  between  1665  and  1700, 
and  Guy  Avas  a  direct  descendant  of  this  John  Scull. 
They  either  were  of  Quaker  stock  or  early  joined 
the  Quaker  Church  for  it  appears  that  Gideon  Scull, 
Guy's  grandfather,  in  1800  was  a  successful  woolen 
merchant  in  Philadelphia  and  a  member  of  the 
Quaker  colony  there.  It  is  also  recorded  that  on  Sep- 
tember 26,  1816,  he  married  a  Miss  Lydia  Ann 
Rowan,  who  was  a  member  of  the  English  Episco- 
palian Church,  and  on  account  of  it  was  "turned  out 
of  meeting."  To  this  pair  were  born  ten  children. 
Gideon,  the  eighth  child  and  Guy's  father,  studied 
law  and  was  admiticd  to  the  Bar  but  he  never  prac- 
ticed on  account  of  having  trouble  with  his  eyes.    He, 

1 


2  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

however,  served  as  Admiralty  Clerk  Secretary  and 
made  two  long  voyages  on  U.  S.  men-of-war.  At 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  he  was  commis- 
sioned a  Captain  in  the  Commissary  Department  and 
rose  to  be  Chief  of  the  Commissary  of  Missouri  and 
at  the  end  was  retired  with  the  rank  of  Colonel.  He 
then  returned  to  Philadelphia  and  entered  the  insur- 
ance business,  afterwards  moving  to  Boston  and  con- 
tinuing it  there. 

In  1871  Gideon  Scull  married  Anne  Jertha  Hed- 
wig  Seiler,  whose  father  was  a  physician  in  Switzer- 
land and  her  mother  a  German.  The  latter's  family 
name  was  Stromeier  and  was  Hanoverian,  the  male 
members  of  the  family  going  back  for  several  genera- 
tions to  an  unbroken  line  of  physicians  and  scientists, 
Guy's  great-grandfather  being  a  Prof.  Stromeier  of 
Gottingen,  court  physician  of  the  English  princes 
whenever  they  came  to  the  Continent.  Madame 
Seiler,  Guy's  maternal  grandmother,  emigrated  to 
the  United  States  in  1866,  with  her  daughter  and 
son,  and  settled  in  Philadelphia.  Following  the  tra- 
ditions of  her  family,  Madame  Seiler  continued  her 
studies  in  this  country  and  in  recognition  of  her  con- 
tributions to  music  and  science  she  was  made  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Philadelphia,  orig- 
inally founded  by  Benjamin  Franklin.  She  had  the 
distinction  at  that  time  of  being  the  third  woman  who 
won  an  election  to  this  body. 


Chapter  II 

BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS 

Guy  Hamilton  Scull  was  born  November  2, 
1876,  in  Boston,  Massachusetts.  In  unusually  com- 
plete and  carefully  preserved  records  kept  by  his 
mother,  and  to  which  she  could  readily  turn  at  the 
age  of  seventy-eight,  we  find  that  the  Skipper  was  an 
exceptionally  fat  and  homely  baby,  and  to  those  who 
knew  his  tireless,  restless  spirit  and  his  nocturnal 
habits  in  later  years,  it  is  of  interest  to  learn  that  for 
a  while  in  this  early  period  he  slept  most  of  the  tune. 
At  the  age  of  four,  his  mother's  record  shows  that 
Guy  had  outlived  this  habit  and  was  handsome  and 
strong  for  his  age;  also  about  this  time  that  he  had 
a  severe  attack  of  scarlet  fever  and  for  a  while  his 
parents  feared  that  he  would  not  recover.  But  re- 
cover he  did,  and  he  never  had  any  after  effects,  grow- 
ing strong  and  vigorous.  At  the  age  of  six  he  began 
his  riding  lessons  and  soon  grew  very  fond  of  this 
exercise,  his  pony  and  a  Gordon  setter  and  in  fact 
all  animals,  retaining  this  early-established  affection 
all  through  his  life.  In  Summer  the  Scull  family 
lived  at  Beverly  Farms  and  there  Guy  learned  to 
swim,  spending  a  great  deal  of  his  leisure  time  with 
his  boy  friends  on  the  beach.    His  day,  even  at  this 

s 


4  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

early  age,  was  laid  out  in  regular  periods  of  work 
and  play.  At  the  age  of  ten  he  also  began  trapping 
muskrats,  and  was  wont  to  go  out  early  in  the  morn- 
ings to  inspect  his  trap  line,  much  to  the  disgust  of 
his  father  who  disliked  to  be  disturbed  in  his  morning 
sleep.  It  appears  that  one  morning,  in  his  efforts  to 
make  a  quiet  passage  from  the  house,  Guy  accident- 
ally dropped  his  traps  and  rubber  boots  just  at  his 
father's  door,  and  the  racket  caused  thereby  nearly 
put  an  end  to  his  sport  of  trapping. 

At  the  age  of  ten  young  Guy  had  two  hours  of 
reading  and  writing  French  with  a  governess  every 
morning  and  if  the  lessons  were  not  well  done  or  he 
was  not  promptly  on  time  he  was  punished  by  being 
kept  on  the  place  all  day.  Guy's  father  and  mother 
were  most  punctual,  and  required  the  same  virtue  from 
the  whole  household. 

During  those  early  boyhood  days  an  incident  in 
the  mother's  record  of  the  child  indicates  that  for- 
titude and  courage,  so  conspicuous  in  his  after  life, 
were  even  then  well  rooted  in  him.  It  seems  that  Guy, 
like  most  other  boys,  aspired  to  a  coat  of  tan  and 
to  be  sure  to  get  a  good  one  he  lay  on  the  beach, 
stripped  to  his  bare  pelt.  He  stuck  at  it  so  long  that 
when  he  came  home  in  the  evening  his  back  was  a 
mass  of  blisters  and  although  extremely  painful,  the 
boy  said  not  a  word  but  went  stoically  to  his  room 
where  his  mother  found  him  later,  stripped  of  even  his 
night  clothes  and  bed  sheets,  lying  flat  on  his  stomach 
to  escape  even  the  touch  of  linen.    It  took  some  days 


BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS    5 

to  get  over  the  effect  of  this  bum,  but  when  he  finally 
had  he  was  very  proud  of  liis  mahogany-brown  skin. 

Fourth  of  July  was  a  big  day  in  Beverly  Farms. 
The  boys  made  as  much  noise  as  any  other  boys  ever 
did,  had  crackers  and  torpedoes,  and  in  addition, 
regularly  rang  the  church  bell  at  4  a.  m.,  much  to  the 
disgust  of  their  elders  in  the  Summer  colony  who 
were  trying  to  get  their  morning  sleep.  Guy  had 
a  fairly  active  time  that  Summer.  By  actual  count, 
he  went  through  ten  pairs  of  trousers.  Guy's  mother 
played  a  considerable  part  in  the  activities  of  this 
group  of  children.  One  of  them,  ^vriting  of  Guy, 
drops  a  line  about  her.  He  saj^s  she  was  always  kind 
and  sympathetic  and  seemed  to  understand  that  they 
could  not  play  without  making  a  racket. 

That  Fall,  Guy's  father  engaged  a  New  England 
schoolmistress  to  teach  the  children  of  the  Scull  fam- 
ily at  home.  The  mornings  were  kept  for  work  and 
the  afternoons  for  play.  Guy,  it  appears,  was  a  good 
pupil  and  showed  early  powers  of  concentration. 

His  mother,  writing  from  her  family  record  of  the 
boy  and  his  brother  and  sisters,  says: 

"When  Guy  was  eight  years  old  he  wished  to  have 
music  lessons  and  chose  the  violoncello  as  his  instru- 
ment. Mr.  Wolf  Fries  was  engaged  to  teach  him. 
Mr.  Fries,  a  much-appreciated  musician,  played  the 
'cello  with  great  virtuosity  and  real  musical  feeling 
and  understanding.  Guy  had  a  good  ear  and  was  by 
natiu-e  nmsical.  Mr.  Fries  understood  the  child  and 
made  the  lessons  pleasant.    A  diflicultv  arose,  how- 


6  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

ever,  in  finding  time  for  practicing  without  interfer- 
ing with  the  study  and  recitation  'hour  or  the  play 
hours  of  the  afternoon,  and  Guy  and  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  early  morning  before  breakfast 
would  be  the  best  time.  Max,  Guy's  elder  brother, 
learned  to  play  the  violin,  and  as  he  also  had  to  prac- 
tice early  and  as  neither  of  the  boys  did  very  good 
work  alone,  I  was  at  the  piano  every  morning  at  seven 
o'clock  and  the  boys  took  turns  working  with  me, 
and  without  interruption  this  programme  was  con- 
tinued year  in  and  year  out  until  the  boys  went  to 
college.  Marjorie,  one  of  their  sisters,  had  begun  to 
play  the  piano  and  one  day  their  father  said  that  if 
they  would  play  a  trio  for  him,  he  would  give  them 
a  pony  and  cart.  That  was,  of  course,  worth  work- 
ing for  and  after  some  practice  the  children  could 
really  play  an  easy  trio  quite  nicely,  and  almost  the 
whole  of  it  by  heart.  After  this  we  had  a  children's 
party  and  Max  and  Guy,  with  my  assistance,  played 
dance  music  for  the  occasion  and  it  was  a  great  suc- 
cess. About  that  time,  or  a  little  later,  we  had  at  our 
house  a  small  dancing  class  of  ten  or  twelve  children, 
Madame  Gravier  teaching  them  the  old-fashioned 
way  of  dancing  and  deportment.  Guy  did  not  care 
for  this  part  of  his  education.  Girls  meant  nothing 
to  him  then. 

"Riding  was  the  most  popular  class  with  Guy,  and 
I  think  with  the  rest  of  the  children.  Mr.  Henry  de 
Bussigny,  the  riding  master,  was  very  fond  of  Guy 
and  when  a  colt  was  born  in  his  stable  he  allowed  him 


RFA'KKLV    FARMS,    188() 


BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS    7 

the  privilege  of  visiting  it  often,  and  afterwards  when 
the  colt  had  grown  old  enough  to  train,  he  encour- 
aged him  to  help  train  it  and  allowed  him  to  ride  the 
colt  exclusively,  the  boy  taking  much  pride  in  teach- 
ing him  his  paces.  Guj'^  seemed  to  have  a  gift  for 
handling  horses.  He  had  a  light  hand,  never  tired 
them,  and  was  most  patient  and  gentle  with  them,  all 
of  which  was  most  useful  to  him  in  after  life. 

"During  the  Summers  Guy  spent  all  his  free  time 
on  the  water.  He  and  his  brother  built  a  canvas  canoe 
one  Summer.  I  promised  them  a  real  boat  if  thej'^ 
could  jump  from  a  boat  fully  clothed,  swim  once 
around  it  and  climb  in  again.  They  accomplished  this 
test  and  were  as  a  result,  soon  after,  very  happy  as 
owners  of  a  real  boat.  It  was  then  that  Guy  was  first 
called  'Skipper,'  a  nickname  that  clung  to  him  for 
life." 

One  of  his  friends,  writing  of  those  days,  says: 

"There  was  a  swimming  hole  called  the  Old  Mill 
where,  as  I  remember  it,  we  spent  nearly  every  wak- 
ing hour  for  several  Summers. 

"The  Old  Mill  was  on  the  ocean  side  of  the  railroad 
bridge  near  the  West  Manchester  Station,  just  at 
the  foot  of  the  Higginson  home  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Denny  Boardman  point.  The  water  from  the 
big  salt  marshes  which  then  stretched  back  to  the  main 
road,  came  under  this  bridge  in  a  strong  current  at 
ebb  tide,  and  poured  inland  at  an  equal  pace  when 
the  tide  was  coming  in.  The  current  had  burrowed 
out  quite  a  hole  in  the  beach.    I  think  we  liked  it  best 


8  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

on  the  ebb  tide  because  the  water  had  been  warmed  in 
the  marshes  and  we  could  play  in  it  as  long  as  we 
wanted.  We  used  to  walk  along  the  track  barefoot, 
wii^  only  shirt  and  trousers  on,  often  having  to  dance 
because  the  ties  and  rails  were  so  hot.  It  was  quite 
a  walk,  but  the  distance  mattered  nothing  and  the 
time  that  it  took  us  to  undress  when  we  arrived,  al- 
though only  long  enough  to  provide  for  undoing 
about  four  buttons,  seemed  all  too  long.  We  often 
spent  the  whole  daj'^  without  a  stitch  of  clothing  on, 
digging  clams,  baking  them  on  the  fire,  and  taking 
an  occasional  swim  when  the  spirit  moved. 

"Guy  was  always  a  leader.  He  and  I  were  about 
the  same  size  and  we  contested  in  every  form  of  sport. 
Swimming,  racing,  throwing  stones  for  distance,  put- 
ting the  shot  with  a  heavier  stone ;  jumping  and  run- 
ning and  wrestling.  It  was  a  great  crew  and  we  had 
many  experiences  which  seemed  like  real  adventures, 
and  burned  us  brown  as  a  nut. 

"On  the  Fourth  of  July  it  was  the  custom  for  all 
of  the  gang  to  start  making  a  noise  at  least  at  day- 
light and  preferably  before,  when  we  decided  that 
spending  the  night  at  home  cramped  our  style,  and  so 
we  undertook  to  spend  it  in  the  woods  to  be  free  to 
make  an  early  start  whenever  we  wanted.  The  mos- 
quitoes had  not  been  invited  but  came  to  the  party, 
so  there  was  no  question  about  being  waked  up  for 
the  start.  We  were  awake  all  night,  and  I  imagine 
the  neighbors  realized  that  the  Fourth  of  July  had 
arrived  very  soon  after  the  midnight  hour.    Then  as 


BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS    9 

always  Guy  was  careless  about  his  personal  comfort 
and  reckless  of  consequences.  If  he  wanted  to  do 
anj'thing,  he  never  seemed  to  count  the  cost  or  have 
the  slightest  fear.  That  was  always  an  outstanding 
characteristic. 

"In  Boston  we  used  to  meet  regularly  after  school 
and  walk  to  a  big  vacant  lot  on  Commonwealth  Ave- 
nue opposite  what  is  now  the  Hotel  Somerset.  There 
we  played  scrub  football,  choosing  up  sides  and  keep- 
ing at  it  until  it  was  too  dark  to  do  another  thing. 
Guy  and  I  had  enough  allowance  to  enable  us  to  buy 
one  soda  a  day,  if  carefully  conserved.  We  ad- 
journed regularly  to  Gedding's,  on  the  corner  of 
Dartmouth  and  Newbury  Streets,  and  wound  up  the 
day  with  a  long  and  deliberate  enjoyment  of  a  five- 
cent  soda,  made  with  as  little  foam  and  as  much 
liquid  as  the  drug  clerk  could  be  persuaded  to  pro- 
vide. When  there  was  no  football  the  crowd  used 
to  have  a  game  called  'Trees,'  a  modified  Prisoner's 
Base  on  the  parkway  on  Commonwealth  Avenue.  I 
forget  the  rules  but  it  involved  constant  running,  tag- 
ging and  tackling  and  a  good  deal  of  wrestling  and 
general  activity,  which  was  good  for  the  boy  but  bad 
for  the  clothes  Looking  back  from  our  present  ad- 
vanced years  it  is  amazing  that  our  mothers  did  not 
object. 

"Later  we  both  played  on  the  football  team  repre- 
senting a  combination  of  Mr.  Hale's  and  Mr.  Noble's 
schools.  Guy  played  end.  He  was  reckless  as  usual 
and  was  nearly  always  the  one  who  attained  a  bloody 


10  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

nose  or  some  other  damage.    When   we   played    at 
Emery's  Field  in  Longwood,  Guy's  elbow  was  dis- 
located and  his  forearm  twisted  round  entirely  out  of 
place.    A  young  English  boy,  who  was  playing  with 
us,  knew  what  to  do  and  by  a  good  deal  of  pressure 
snapped  the  joint  back  into  place.     Guy  was  lying 
on  his  back;   the  boy  told  him  it  was  going  to  hurt 
pretty  badly  but  Guy  gi'uffly  told  him  to  go  ahead; 
he  did  not  wince  or  say  a  word  and  with  a  snap  the 
elbow  went  back  into  place.     We  all  admired  him 
very  much,  and  it  was  just  one  more  evidence  of  the 
almost  Indian  stoicism  which  he  always  showed.     (At 
home  he  never  told  of  this  incident.)     Guy  went  his 
own  way;    was  always  reckless  and  careless  of  his 
physical  comfort  and  well  being." 

Another  one  of  the  boys  with    Scull   at   Beverly 
Farms  states  that  Guy  was  one  of  the  handsomest 
and  most  fearless  boys  that  he  Imew,  and  that  all 
through  life  Scull  was  one  of  the   men    he    always 
looked  forward  to  meeting  and  swapping  tales  and 
opinions  on  anything — business,  politics  or  adventure. 
In  a  letter  to  Guy's  mother  he  pictures  Guy  as  "a 
curly-headed  boy  in  a  gray  flannel  shirt  dashing  across 
the  avenue  and  under  one  of  the  maple  trees  at  our 
place  at  Beverly  Farms.    Another  picture  I  have  of 
him  when  he  was  somewhat  older  is  at  the  wheel  of 
his  catboat  coming  into  Rockport  Harbor  through 
the  rain  and  fog.     We  were  cruising  together,  the 
weather  had  turned  foul  and  while  my  boat  was  be- 
ing reefed  he  and  Eben  Stanwood  had  gone  outside 


BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS      11 

to  see  how  things  looked.  Eben  told  us  afterwards 
that  when  they  got  out  where  it  was  rough  and  were 
turning  back  to  report  that  it  was  no  day  for  little 
boats  to  be  at  sea,  they  got  in  irons  so  that  they  lost 
control  of  their  ship.  We  were  only  fourteen  or  fif- 
teen years  old  and  Eben  confessed  that  it  was  very 
disagreeable  and  that  he  was  thoroughly  scared  but 
he  said  Guy  seemed  to  rather  like  it. 

"In  our  fifteenth  year  Guy  was  given  a  twenty- 
foot  centreboard  catboat  and  I  a  twenty-one  foot  jib 
and  mainsail  boat.  His  was  the  more  comfortable 
and  mine  the  faster  and  more  seaworthy.  Neither 
boat  had  any  inside  fittings  except  transoms  with 
cushions  on  which  two  or  three  boys  could  sleep. 
Our  cooking  utensils  were  old-fashioned  Florence  oil 
stoves,  a  sauce  pan  and  a  frying  pan.  Our  food  was 
Hecker's  oatmeal,  eggs,  potatoes,  onions,  pilot  biscuit, 
bacon  and  canned  goods.  Really,  the  only  decent 
meals  we  had  were  at  the  houses  of  friends.  Of  course 
we  didn't  appreciate  this,  and  thought  our  own  half- 
cooked  dishes  delightful.  The  cabins  were  so  small 
that  it  wasn't  possible  to  sit  up  quite  straight  and 
of  course  everything  got  damp  and  mouldy  and  there 
was  a  permanent  smell  of  a  mixture  of  mustiness  and 
kerosene.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  morning 
plunge  as  soon  as  we  waked,  the  complete  freedom 
of  the  life,  and  the  excitement  of  relying  on  our  own 
skill  and  judgment  for  the  first  time. 

"Our  first  cruise  was  around  Cape  Ann  to  York 
Harbor  and  back.    The  run  from  York  to  Cape  Ann 


12  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

is  about  30  miles  and  across  Ipswich  Bay  the  straight 
course  carries  you  seven  miles  off  shore.    On  the  after- 
noon of  our  return  trip,  While  we  were  still  several 
miles  from  Cape  Ann,  we  ran  into  a  very  black  look- 
ing squall.    I  remember  looking  anxiously  at  Guy's 
boat,  which  was  nearly  a  mile  to  leeward,  and  wonder- 
ing whether  they  would  be  all  right.     Fortunately 
the  wind  wasn't  very  great  and  was  quickly  followed 
by  a  calm  and  some  light  airs.     By  this  time  it  was 
dark  and  we  hadn't  seen  Guy  since  the  squall  shut 
down.    We  anchored  in  Gloucester  about  10  o'clock 
and  when  we  waked  about  five  the  next  morning  there 
was  Lester  Monks,  who  was  Guy's  crew,  grinning 
down  the  hatch  at  us.    It  seemed  that  they  had  been 
hit  harder  than  we  had  and  were  blown  off  their  course 
and  out  to  sea  while  reefing.    Then  the  wind  dropped 
and  they  had  had  a  long,  slow  beat  all  night,  not  reach- 
ing Gloucester  till  daylight,  found  our  moorings  and 
tied  on  to  our  stern.     Guy  told  us  that  while  sitting 
steering  in  the  dark,  he  kept  noticing  a  red  light  that 
seemed  a  long  way  off.     All  of   a    sudden   he    was 
stopped  by  a  coasting  schooner  looming  up  out  of  the 
darkness  and  passing  very  close.     The  light  he  had 
been  watching  was  her  port  sailing  light.    This  was 
his  first  cruise,  and  he  was  so  green  that  he  did  not 
realize  the  danger  he  was  in  until  it  was  past." 

In  1889  Mrs.  Scull  took  her  four  children  to 
Europe  to  visit  their  German  cousins.  Guy,  aged 
twelve,  was  apparently  either  too  young  to  appre- 
ciate what  he  saw  or  he  was  not  interested.    He  was 


BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL  DAYS      13 

bored  completely  and  quite  frank  about  it.  Only  one 
museum,  the  Historical  Museum  in  Dresden,  took 
his  fancy.  As  for  his  German  cousins,  they  did  not 
appeal  to  him  at  all.  They  spoke  very  little  or  no 
English  and  Guy's  German  was  equally  poor.  The 
patience,  tact  and  diplomacy  of  Guy's  mother  must 
have  been  stretched  to  its  limit  on  this  trip.  She  does 
not  write  much  about  it. 

"When  we  returned  home,"  she  says,  "Guy  had 
outgrown  our  little  home  school  and  we  sent  him  to 
Mr.  Hale's  school  from  where  he  graduated  for  Har- 
vard, and  while  in  this  school  he  led  the  happy,  care- 
free life,  full  of  the  activity  of  a  schoolboy  of  his  age. 

"The  relations  between  Guy  and  his  father  had 
always  been  very  happy.  Guy's  quiet,  thoughtful 
manner  appealed  to  his  father,  who  was  a  bright,  in- 
telligent man,  highly  cultivated  and  informed,  and 
who  took  a  great  interest  in  his  son's  progress  though 
without  taking  much  active  part  in  his  development. 
Both  were  great  readers  and  rather  introspective,  and 
very  fond  of  each  other.  This  bond  grew  in  intimacy 
as  the  years  went  on,  and  was  a  pleasure  to  them 
always." 

"He  was  a  handsome,  lovable,  adventurous  and 
pugnacious  schoolboy  and  he  retained  these  charac- 
teristics until  his  death,"  writes  another  friend.  "He 
came  to  my  house  as  a  friend  of  my  children,  but  he 
soon  endeared  himself  to  the  rest  of  the  family,  and 
for  many  years  was  a  frequent  and  welcome  guest. 
He  was  treated,  and,  I  think,  considered  himself  as 


14  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

one  of  the  family,  and  after  his  return  from  each  of 
his  adventures  he  took  his  place  again  as  one  of  the 
family  with  no  apparent  break  in  his  friendly  rela- 
tions. 

"As  he  afterwards  developed  he  became  a  man  of 
high  character,  of  unimpeachable  honesty,  of  un- 
doubted courage  and  of  a  strong  will.  His  most 
striking  characteristic  was  his  extraordinary  personal 
magnetism,  which  was  unfailingly  felt  by  all  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact." 


Chapter  III 
HARVARD— 1894-1898 

Scull's  first  year  at  Harvard  was  very  much  like 
that  of  any  other  freshman.  Unlike  many  of  them 
he  passed  his  entrance  examinations  with  no  condi- 
tions and  even  worked  off  at  this  time  his  advanced 
French  and  German.  Having  been  born  in  Boston, 
and  the  Back  Bay  at  that,  and  also  prepared  there 
for  college,  he  knew  many  of  the  upper  classmen  and 
faculty.  For  two  years  he  roomed  in  Claverly.  He 
had  a  certain  entree,  so  to  speak,  which,  whether  it 
meant  anything  or  not,  certainly  meant  nothing  to 
Scull.  The  Skipper  made  his  own  way  as  he  went 
along  and  here  at  Harvard  this  independence  and  dis- 
like of  the  conventional  things  first  shown  in  school 
days  took  firmer  root  in  his  character  and  made 
friends  for  him  here  as  they  did  in  after  life  with 
people  in  every  walk  of  life  and  in  about  every  race, 
creed  and  color. 

A  member  of  Scull's  class  and  one  who  afterwards 
became  his  brother-in-law,  met  him  early  in  college 
life  and  cemented  relations  underneath  a  fighting, 
struggling  mob  of  Freshmen  and  Sophomores  in  the 
annual  rush,  each  believing  the  other  to  be  an  oppo- 
nent until  the  pack  unwound  and  in  the  light  of  day 

15 


16  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

they  saw  and  recognized  each  other  as  warriors  on 
the  same  side.  Later  they  took  rooms  together  in  Hol- 
vvorthy  and  this  was  the  beginning  of  a  long  friend- 
ship. Both  of  these  men  went  in  for  athletics  during 
their  Freshman  year,  his  roommate  making  the  Fresh- 
man nine  and  Scull  the  football  team  and  crew.  In 
Sophomore  year  Guy  rowed  on  the  Sophomore  crew; 
the  other  stuck  to  baseball  and,  in  1898,  made  the 
Varsity.  Scull,  with  the  exception  of  occasional  ten- 
nis, rowing  and  sailing,  put  most  of  his  leisure  time 
in  digging  up  material  for  writing,  in  which  work  he 
suddenly  began  to  take  a  deep  interest. 

During  his  four  years  at  Harvard  he  was  active 
in  about  every  phase  of  college  life.  He  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Freshman  Glee  Club,  president  of  the 
O  K  Society,  vice-president  of  the  Hasty  Pudding 
Club,  secretary  of  the  Harvard  Advocate  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  English  Club,  the  Signet,  Institute  of  1770, 
O  K,  D  K  E,  and  Alpha  Delta  Phi. 

Scull's  friends  were  not  of  any  one  group  or  clique 
and  included  many  men  in  other  classes. 

"I  did  not  see  a  great  deal  of  Scull  in  Harvard," 
writes  one  of  them,  "although  we  had  a  great  many 
friends  in  common.  He  was  extremely  good  looking, 
decidedly  different  from  the  average  run  of  under- 
graduates— a  little  more  taciturn — and  a  dreamer. 
He  was  familiarly  known  as  Skipper,  I  suppose 
through  some  familiarity  with  boats — but  I  always 
felt  that  the  sobriquet  was  one  of  affection  as  much 
as  anything  else.    He  had  rather  a  delightful  voice, 


HARVvVHD,   KKIvSILMAN   YKAU,  1895 


HARVARD  17 

or  at  least  we  thought  so,  and  used  to  manufacture 
his  own  tunes  for  some  of  Kipling's  poems;  a  par- 
ticular favorite  of  his  in  the  little  group  which  used 
to  sit  around  him  being  'Gentlemen  Rankers.'  Most 
of  his  songs  were  decidedly  sombre,  but  so  was  he. 

"Professor  Copeland  of  Harvard  used  to  read  to 
an  English  class  of  his  articles  which  Scull  had  writ- 
ten as  a  war  correspondent  m  South  Africa.  One  in 
particular  made  a  great  impression  on  the  members 
of  the  class, — 'The  Battle  of  Colenso,'  in  which  Scull 
describes  the  death  of  a  gunner.  It  was  tremen- 
dously powerful." 

Another  man  who,  like  Scull,  went  in  for  writing, 
and  their  common  interest  founded  here  followed  side 
by  side  for  a  long  term  of  years  in  and  out  of  college, 
through  newspaper  work,  editorials,  and  into  short 
story  Avork,  essays  and  fiction,  describes  him  in  this 

wav: 

"It  was  in  the  year  1894  that  I  first  saw  him  in 
a  class  room  looking,  with  his  uncommonly  well-chis- 
eled features,  so  much  more  like  a  piece  of  classic 
sculpture  than  anyone  else  in  the  whole  place  that  you 
immediately  wanted  to  know  who  he  was.  It  did  not 
take  long  to  find  out  or  to  know  him  himself,  because 
he  immediately  responded  to  any  friendly  remark  and 
never  forgot  the  speaker  afterwards. 

"Because  of  his  family  life  in  Boston,  Guy  natur- 
ally belonged  to  the  somewhat  carefully  picked  and 
pruned  college  social  circle,  but  with  a  simplicity  pe- 
culiar to  him  he  knew  almost  everyone  with  whom  he 


18  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

came  in  contact.  He  discarded  all  of  the  little  re- 
finements, and  'side'  which  college  boys  normally 
adore,  dropped  from  him  with  something  like  a  curse. 

"He  went  in  for  athletics  at  first.  Then  he  took  up 
writing  for  the  college  magazine.  Through  the  Har- 
vard Advocate  I  got  hold  of  Scull's  work  and  we 
wrote  a  story  together  which  was  pretty  typical  of  un- 
dergraduate mental  development.  That  is  to  say  we 
pictured  a  college  chap  going  to  a  cheap  hotel  with  a 
girl  he  had  picked  up  on  the  street.  So  far  so  good,  or 
rather  so  bad.  But  at  a  certain  point  in  the  story  we 
caused  our  hero  to  make  a  great  renunciation,  and  he 
came  back  to  Cambridge  with  feelings  of  consideralile 
virtue  and  a  well-developed  sense  of  protection  to- 
wards the  weaker  sex. 

"This  story,  which  we  signed  'Basil  Courtney  Un- 
derwood,' caused  a  bit  of  a  stir  in  the  college  com- 
munity and  was  referred  to  by  'Copey'  (Prof.  Cope- 
land)  with  due  seriousness  in  the  ckss  room.  But 
this  was  a  comparatively  trivial  effort  for  Scull. 

"One  afternoon  he  came  into  my  room  and  said  that 
he  had  thought  of  a  great  thing  he  wanted  to  write  but 
he  doubted  if  he  had  the  power  to  do  it  now — would 
have  to  wait  until  he  was  older.  But  in  a  few  days 
he  came  back  with  the  story  all  written :  It  was  called 
'A  Man  and  the  Sea.'  It  was  simply  the  description 
of  a  man,  alone  in  an  utterly  empty  ocean,  battling 
for  his  life.  He  had  escaped  from  a  shipwreck  on  a 
crude  raft  which  sank  under  him,  leaving  him  to  fight 
it  out  by  swimming  until  he  went  do^\Ti.     It  was 


HARVARD  19 

printed  in  the  Atlantic  IMonthly  by  Walter  Page  who 
was  then  editor. 

"Once  we  were  riding  out  to  Cambridge  on  the  last 
car.     The  last  car  to  Cambridge  always  carried  the 
dregs  of  society,  both  student  and  otherwise.     Scull 
and  I  had  been  dining  and  talking  late,  in  fact  in 
those  days  we  used  to  wander  aimlessly  about  the  pic- 
turesque North  End  of  Boston  and  the  docks  until  all 
hours  of  the  morning,  just  for  the  pleasure  of  being 
there.    In  this  last  car  that  night  a  rather  small,  thin 
man  got  in  with  a  huge  bundle  of  lamidry  in  a  basket. 
He  wanted  to  sit  down  with  his  bundle,  which  he  might 
just  as  well  as  not  have  done,  but  the  conductor  or- 
dered him  on  the  platform.    Scull's  face  got  very  dark 
and  tense.     He  did  not  say  anything,  however,  but 
when  the  conductor  came  along  for  his  fare  he  gave 
him  a  pretty  battered  old  nickel  which  he  had  found 
somewhere.     The  conductor  said  he  would  not  take 
it,  but  Scull  looked  at  him  as  if  he  intended  to  kill 
him.    All  he  said  was :  'That's  all  you'll  get,'  and  after 
the  conductor  looked  at  him  he  decided  to  drop  the 
subject.     Scull  hated  that  conductor  so  deeply  for 
not  being  respectful  to  the  man  with  the  bundle  that 
it  took  him  an  hour  to  forget  it. 

"One  night  we  tramped  out  towards  Revere  Beach, 
passing  innumerable  delightful  cemeteries  and 
marshes,  and  to  make  everything  perfect  we  were 
actually  arrested  as  vagrants  by  a  large  policeman 
and  taken  to  police  headquarters  and  held  until  day- 
light." 


20  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Scull's  letters  to  his  mother  during  his  college  ca- 
reer are  longer  and  reflect  his  thoughts  and  his  work 
much  better  than  those  written  in  later  years.  When 
he  began  to  write,  for  instance,  these  letters  for  Scull 
at  least  were  almost  verbose. 

In  one  written  May  15,  1897,  he  says: 
"I  take  this  opportunity  of  writing  you — ^not  that 
I  would  intimate  that  I  do  so  because  I  have  nothing 
better  to  do,  for  nothing  could  be  better — but  because 
I  think  this  letter  will  just  catch  the  steamer  for 
Genoa.  You  see  I  have  become  long-winded,  so  to 
speak.  I  have  been  reading  a  great  deal  lately,  a  great 
deal  of  Eighteenth  Century  literature  and  have  thus 
become  somewhat  lengthy  in  my  talk.  *  *  *  My 
plans  for  the  Summer  are  not  yet  settled  although 
I  am  determined  that  they  shall  take  some  form  of 
literary  work.  It  might  please  you  to  hear  that  I 
was  elected  on  the  first  to  the  Senior  society  corre- 
sponding to  the  Signet  and  of  a  similar  construction. 
My  eyes  are  practically  all  right  again.  I  have  just 
sent  in  a  story  to  the  Youth's  Companion  from  which 
I  hope  favorable  results.  As  for  work  in  general  it 
goes  rather  slow.  I  am  thinking  of  a  story  now  to 
use  primarily  for  my  O  K  initiation,  connected  with 
the  hospital  but  not  concluding,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  with  the  death  of  all  concerned.  In  this  story 
I  intend  to  venture  on  a  relation  with  the  'tender 
passion,'  which  must  be  treated  with  exceeding  care. 
This,  you  see,  is  rather  a  new  departure  and  I  hope 
thereby  in  this  particular  story  at  least  to  bring  out 


HARVARD  21 

the  pathos  and  power  of  the  situation  without  the  aid 
of  things  pertaining  to  the  morbid  state." 

A  week  later  he  writes  his  mother  that  he  has  just 
had  a  piece  of  excellent  luck  in  that  the  Youth's  Com- 
panion had  accepted  the  story  he  had  sent  it:  "So 
you  see,"  he  writes,  "I  am  at  last  to  appear  in  the 
print  of  a  real  magazine.  True  it  is  only  the  Com- 
panion but  a  magazine  for  all  that.  I  say  at  last  as 
if  I  had  struggled  for  years  without  success.  Per- 
haps it  is  bad  for  me  to  attain  this  little  success  with- 
out having  gone  through  a  longer  trial  of  failure.  It 
may  give  me  a  too  good  idea  of  my  own  power.  I 
do  not  think,  however,  that  I  will  become  a  victim  of 
that  disease  familiarly  known  as  swelled  head. 
*  *  *  I  have  an  example  too  striking  to  permit 
my  following  in  his  footsteps  and  besides  Mr.  Cope- 
land  is  at  my  elbow  so  to  speak  to  see  that  I  am  told 
sufficiently  often  that  my  work  is  not  worth  anything. 

"In  reading  a  little  book  to-day  where  friendship 
is  mentioned  I  hit,  quite  by  accident,  upon  the  solu- 
tion of  a  problem  Avhich  I  have  many  times  before 
heard  discussed.  It  has  been  said  and  is  in  fact  almost 
a  general  truth  that  silence  between  two  friends  is 
the  greatest  test  for  friendship;  that  it  denotes  the 
communion  of  souls.  I  have  also  heard  it  said  that 
silence  is  the  expression  of  uncongenialit}^  but  that 
when  persons  care  for  one  another  they  are  interested 
and  will  talk.  Both  these  theories  are  in  a  measure 
correct.  The  first  state  of  affairs  is  evolved  from  the 
similarities    of    natures;     the    second    results    from 


22  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

friendship  being  sprung  from  dissimilarities  of  char- 
acter." 

In  a  letter  written  ^lay  30th  he  tells  his  mother 
that  Mr.  Copeland  had  opened  the  way  to  an  intro- 
duction to  Mr.  Page,  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
by  showing  him  several  of  his  (Scull's)  articles  for 
the  Advocate.  Scull  adds,  in  his  modest  way,  that 
he  doesn't  think  this  will  develop  into  anything,  but 
if  it  does  it  would  be  a  big  thing  for  him.  This  intro- 
duction evidently  did  result  in  something  for  on  June 
2nd  Scull  received  a  personal  note  from  Mr.  Page 
accepting  for  publication  one  of  the  sketches  sub- 
mitted called,  "Within  the  Walls."   Mr.  Page  wrote: 

"To  publish  a  sketch  like  this  is  a  new  departure 
for  the  Atlantic — a  departure  that  I  am  not  sorry  to 
make.  *  *  *  I  pray  you,  however,  send  me  any 
more  that  you  may  write.  *  *  *  J  have  a  very 
hearty  appreciation  of  this  little  sketch  and  I  hope  to 
see  you  and  to  hear  from  you  at  your  convenience 
and  often." 

This  letter  greatly  encouraged  Scull  to  write  more. 
He  immediately  made  arrangements  to  spend  that 
summer  in  Boston  working  on  a  newspaper  there  and 
to  continue  writing  for  the  magazine.  Great  must 
have  been  his  elation  a  week  later  when  he  received 
another  letter  from  Mr.  Page  accepting  for  the  Atlan- 
tic another  sketch  called  "A  Man  and  the  Sea."  Scull 
wrote  his  mother  this  news  with  much  apparent  joy 
and  enthusiasm  and  adds:  "Tonight  (June  21,  1897) 
is  Strawberry  Night  at  the  Pudding  and  I  am  going 


HARVARD  23 

to  take  the  part  of  'Professor  Bartlett'  in  a  light  com- 
edy." The  friends  of  the  Skipper  who  didn't  know 
him  in  Harvard  can  hardly  understand,  even  by  the 
widest  stretch  of  imagination,  how  he  could  ever  be 
induced  to  get  on  a  stage  even  as  scene  shifter! 

Late  in  June  he  writes  his  mother  that  Mr.  Green- 
ough  had  secured  him  a  place  on  the  staff  of  the  Bos- 
ton Herald  for  the  coming  summer  and  that  he  was 
going  to  room  with  Sam  Fuller.  He  strikes  a  very 
serious  vein  in  this  letter  by  closing  as  follows: 
"Cambridge  has  been  very  dull  lately,  as  most  of  the 
boys  have  gone.  Do  you  know  I  think  I  have  changed 
a  good  deal  this  Winter.  That  stage  of  existence  which 
a  good  many  men  go  through  on  leaving  college; 
when  they  first  begin  to  realize  that  Harvard  instead 
of  being  the  universe  is  only  a  pleasure  garden,  and 
that  the  real  existence  is  outside;  this  stage  I  think 
I  have  passed.  I  have  been,  I  am  afraid,  a  little 
morbid  in  my  views  of  life,  but  noAv  I  have  somehow 
grown  accustomed  to  things,  and  the  morbidness  is 
going  away.  Don't  think,  mother,  that  I  am  at  all 
unhappy,  for  I  enjoy  myself  very  much;  this  is 
merely  the  way  I  look  at  things  when  I  am  alone." 

Scull's  letters  to  his  mother  that  summer  told  of 
his  work  on  the  Boston  Herald,  of  his  reporter  asso- 
ciates, the  various  kinds  of  assignments  he  received, 
of  the  pleasures  and  drudgerj^  of  the  work  and  how 
"done"  he  was  at  the  end  of  the  day's  work  and  how 
difficult  it  then  was  to  sit  down  and  try  and  construct 
a  plot  or  write  a  story.     He  evidently  did  try  to 


24.  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

write  another  story  but  he  confesses  that  it  was  an- 
other morbid  one  and  that  he  got  so  worked  up  in  the 
writing  of  it  that  he  was  compelled  to  go  out  in  the 
night  and  walk  the  street  to  "keep  the  balance  of  my 
mind." 

The  subject  of  his  choosing  a  permanent  occupa- 
tion was  apparently  then  up  for  discussion  in  the  fam- 
ily, for  Scull  in  a  later  letter  says: 

"What  Doctor  Weir  Mitchell  told  you  and  Dad 
about  the  necessity  of  some  regular  means  of  support 
for  an  author,  outside  of  his  work,  is  perfectly  true, 
but  I  also  think,  and  my  work  now  does  much  to 
prove  it,  that  if  a  man  wishes  to  write,  it  is  best  if  he 
has  no  other  demand  on  his  attention.  Tell  Dad  I 
suppose  I  will  get  paid  for  my  stories  in  the  Atlantic 
but  it  will  not  be  much.  The  Youth's  Companion 
sent  me  a  check  for  $30  for  the  story  I  wrote  them." 

There  is  a  reference  in  one  of  his  letters  to  his 
mother  that  summer  concerning  women.  She  must 
have  been  informed  that  her  son  was  engaged. 

"There  is  no  cause  for  you  to  worry,  mother," 

writes  Scull,  "even  if  Miss  G says  I  am  engaged. 

I  have  as  yet  no  thoughts  of  getting  married ;  rather 
on  the  contrary  the  older  I  grow  the  more  I  see  the 
fallacy  of  tying  yourself  down  to  the  prosaic  existence 
of  matrimony  while  still  so  young.  You  may  think 
I  am  talking  over  my  head  in  thus  expressing  my 
views,  but  when  a  man  is  young  and  healthy  why 
should  he  blindlv  tie  both  hands  and  feet  and  lead  the 


HARVARD  25 

same  life  as  that  of  an  elderly  man  before  he  had  seen 
this  world  of  man." 

In  another  letter  Scull  gives  an  interesting  picture 
of  life  in  the  City  Room  of  a  daily  newspaper  when 
he  describes  a  rush  Saturday  night  as  follows: 

"I  had  been  in  Charlestown  all  through  the  even- 
ing interviewing  ward  politicians  on  the  coming  State 
elections  in  the  fall.     About  half  past  eleven  I  got 
back  to  the  office  and  began  to  write  out  my  inter- 
views.   At  first  I  wrote  easily,  in  no  great  hurry,  but 
suddenly  it  was  called  to  my  attention  that  the  paper 
went  to  press  earlier  that  night  than  usual.    It  then 
became  a  race  between  the  old  white-faced  clock  on 
the  wall  and  my  poor  wits.    You  would  have  laughed 
had  you  read  the  tremendous  and  ahnost  meaning- 
less phrases  that  I  put  into  the  mouths  of  those  poli- 
ticians that  night,  but  the  copy  had  to  be  in  before 
quarter  to  one  and  I  had  little  time  for  a  suitable 
distinction  of  words.     At  last  I  finished;    handed 
in  my  work  to  the  old  gruff  night  editor  and  filling 
my  pipe  enjoyed  a  good  smoke  while  the  presses  rum- 
bled beneath  me."  Scull  adds  that  he  has  received  sev- 
eral compliments  on  his  sketch  in  the  Atlantic  but 
he  realizes  that  if  anyone  thought  it  poor  he  would 
not  have  been  told  so  and  was,  therefore,  not  in  much 
danger   of  getting   a   swelled  head   from   his   first 
production. 

Late  that  summer  in  another  letter  he  admits  to 
his  mother  that  Professor  Copeland  has  pronounced 


26  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

as  "no  good"  his  last  attempt  at  a  story.  While  this 
rather  discouraged  the  Skipper  he  acknowledged  that 
Copeland  was  an  excellent  judge  and  that  he  was  for- 
tunate in  having  such  a  friend. 

"I  know  that  I  must  expect  that  some  of  my  stories 
will  turn  out  failures,"  writes  Scull,  "that  I  cannot 
always  do  Atlantic  work,  but  it  hit  me  a  little  hard 
at  first,  that  after  I  had  once  got  my  foot  in  a  crevice 
of  the  wall  to  have  it  partly  dislodged  by  a  flat  fail- 
ure, still  I  will  keep  pegging  away  at  it  but  I  don't 
think  I  will  write  any  more  stories  until  I  have  had 
a  rest.  There  must  be  something  strange  about  my 
make-up  for  I  can  take  no  delight  in  what  I  have  done 
if  I  am  not  at  the  time  doing  as  well  or  better.  For 
instance,  when  I  received  a  copy  of  the  Atlantic  with 
'The  Man  and  the  Sea'  in  it,  it  sort  of  threw  in  my 
face,  if  you  will  excuse  the  phrase,  that  lately  I  have 
been  a  failure  and  that  at  present  there  seems  little 
chance  of  my  making  myself  anything  else,  but  as 
soon  as  I  get  to  writing  on  a  good  theme  all  this  imme- 
diately goes  and  I  begin  to  picture  a  brilliant  future 
for  that  yarn  that  is  gradually  growing  in  substance 
as  I  write." 

In  all  these  letters  through  that  summer  there  are 
constant  references  to  the  health  of  his  father,  who 
was  in  Europe  with  his  mother,  inquiries  as  to  his 
health  and  sincere  delight  upon  receipt  of  news  from 
his  mother  that  his  father  was  improving.  Scull 
spent  the  end  of  the  summer  before  returning  to  col- 
lege for  Senior  Year  with   Humphrey   Nichols   at 


HAHXAHD  FRESIIMAX  CUKW,  1895 


HARVARD  27 

York  Harbor,  where  they  enjoyed  themselves  im- 
mensely, sailing  and  swimming. 

Well  into  the  middle  of  the  fall  term  he  mentions 
women  again  as  follows: 

"It  might  be  of  interest  to  know  that  I  have  fallen 
in  love  again.  She  is  a  western  girl,  tall,  dignified 
and  possessing  a  well  balanced  and  charming  dis- 
position. But  this  morning  I  have  seen  her  for  the 
last  time.  It  was  strange  that  it  should  turn  out  so 
but  as  I  was  doing  my  best  to  win  her  affections  it 
appeared  in  the  conversation  that  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  she  was  engaged  to  a  slim,  insignificant  man 
who  sat  in  the  corner  by  himself;  and  it  afterward 
appeared  in  the  conversation  that  that  man  was  a 
graduate  of  Yale.  Strange,  but  a  trifle  embarrass- 
ing for  me." 

Scull  finishes  this  letter  by  announcing  to  his 
mother  that  he  is  at  work  on  a  story  of  which  he  has 
great  expectations.  He  says:  "It  is  a  wild  sort  of 
a  yam,  full  of  ships  and  wrecks  and  the  sea.  It  begins 
with  a  man  watching  the  dawn  break  over  Boston 
Harbor  and  after  diverse  incidents  ends  with  that 
man's  burial  at  sea.  I  am  sorry  to  kill  another  man 
but  this  fellow  is  to  have  such  a  wonderful  end  that 
for  him  to  miss  it  would  be  losing  half  his  life." 

In  one  of  his  last  college  letters  Scull  refers  to  his 
last  year  at  Harvard: 

"Soon  my  college  career  will  be  a  thing  to  look 
back  upon ;  something  that  has  gone  into  the  wreck- 
age of  the  past;  that  all  tliese  men  whom  I  see  laugh- 


28  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

ing  and  cursing  around  me,  who  may  be  said  to  make 
up  the  circle  of  my  friends,  will  be  scattered  to  the 
thirty-two  winds  of  heaven,  seldom  to  be  seen  again. 
And,  as  for  going  to  my  Class  Day  to  hover  about 
the  muslin  dresses  and  be  passed  ice  cream  that  is 
melted,  I  have  determined  to  inflict  no  such  punish- 
ment upon  myself.  This,  however,  is  a  long  ways 
ahead  and  needs  no  argument  at  present." 

This  last  letter  was  written  some  time  before  the 
approaching  June.  A  number  of  things  happened 
in  the  meantime,  all  of  which  turned  out  to  be  big 
events  in  his  life:  one,  that  he  was  chosen  Class  Poet 
by  a  vote  of  his  class,  and  another,  that  the  war  clouds 
which  had  begun  to  assemble  over  Cuba  were  bring- 
ing the  United  States  nearer  and  nearer  the  final  act 
of  declaring  war,  and  finally  with  the  blowing  up  of 
the  Maine,  the  declaration  of  war  against  Spain. 
Scull  never  wix)te  his  class  poem  but  did  write  the 
"Toast  to  '98."  He  went  through  his  last  year  up  to, 
but  not  including.  Commencement  Day.  The  war 
spirit  had  run  high  in  Cambridge;  one  by  one,  a 
number  of  men  had  disappeared  from  college  to  enlist 
in  the  Army  and  Navy.  Scull  was  growing  restless. 
He  offered  his  services  to  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
and  received  this  rather  stiff  and  formal  reply  from 
the  Governor: 

"I  beg  to  acknowledge  receipt  of  your  favor  of 
April  23rd  which,  with  other  similar  applications,  will 
be  referred  through  the  proper  channels  for  proper 


HARVARD  29 

consideration.    Thanking  you  for  your  patriotic  offer, 
'  "Yours  very  truly, 

"Roger  Wolcott." 

Then,  one  night  after  the  last  Hasty  Pudding  play 
in  which  Scull  took  a  part,  he  and  a  number  of  his 
mates  quietly  slipped  out  of  Cambridge  without  even 
saying  good-bye  and  headed  for  San  Antonio,  Texas, 
to  join  the  Rough  Riders.  This  quiet  and  unosten- 
tatious departure  of  Scull  with  his  mates  was  charac- 
teristic of  him.  There  was  no  cheering  and  parade, 
no  playing  of  bands  and  waving  of  flags,  no  send-off. 
His  mother  and  father  might  have  known  of  his  inten- 
tions but  they  were  in  Europe  at  the  time. 

On  this  subject  Dean  Briggs  of  Harvard  College 
wrote  Scull's  mother  as  follows: 

"I  am  sorry  to  hear  that  your  son  Guy  has  been 
called  away  to  military  service.  I  wish  he  might  not 
have  had  to  go  so  early  but  I  appreciate  the  spirit 
of  his  going  and  wish  him  all  success." 

To  Scull  himself,  Dean  Briggs  wrote  this: 

"I  heard  you  had  gone  and  I  heard  too  that  you  had 
gone  without  much  formality.  I  have  no  doubt  you 
were  doing  exactly  what  you  thought  right  and 
though  I  believe  most  men  would  do  better  if  they 
waited,  I  cannot  be  sorry,  after  all,  that  some  Har- 
vard men  were  ready  early  and  can  only  wish  you 
all  success." 


30  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

A  friend  of  the  Scull  family,  who  was  in  Cam- 
bridge on  Class  Day,  described  this  impressive  cere- 
mony of  the  class  of  1898  to  Scull's  mother: 

*'When  the  moment  came  for  the  Class  Poet  to  ap- 
pear the  Marshal  came  forward  and  annoimced  that 
there  would  be  no  Class  Poem  as  the  Class  Poet,  Guv 
H.  Scull,  had  joined  the  Rough  Riders  and  was  at 
the  front.  The  theatre  rang  and  rang  again  with 
cheers.'* 

At  the  class  dinner  the  "Toast  to  '98"  written  by 
Scull  was  read  with  appropriate  ceremony.  It  runs: 

Harvard  '98 

Four  short  years  at  college  is  all  that  men  will  stay. 
The  class  will  break  asunder,  in  silence  drift  away ; 
Some  of  us  may  meet  again,  thirty  years  from  now. 
Some  we'll  see  most  every  day, 
And  some  we'll  never  know; 
And  when  we're  wrinkled,  old  and  worn. 
With  long  hair  turned  to  gray; 

And  we  march  in  sad  procession  on  our  last  Com- 
mencement Day, 
For  one  good  toast,  we'll  fill  her  up 
Before  it  grows  too  late. 
We'll  snap  the  stems,  with  bottoms  up. 
To  the  Class  of  'Ninety-Eight. 


Chapter  IV 
THE  ROUGH  RIDERS— 1898 

Scull  embarked  upon  his  first  great  adventure  in 
high  spirits.  What  his  departure  lacked  in  the  noisy 
send-off  of  other  volunteers,  it  certainly  did  not  lose 
anything  in  the  high  lights  of  romance.  There  was 
the  enthusiasm  of  youth,  the  lift  of  impetuous  class- 
mates and  associates,  the  inspiration  of  approaching 
Commencement,  the  firing  of  his  imagination  by  the 
international  events  leading  up  to  the  opening  of  the 
big  drama,  the  sudden  decision  to  enlist,  the  throwing 
of  discretion  to  the  winds,  the  abandonment  of  his  de- 
gree and  the  nig'ht  departure  of  himself  and  his  mates 
for  the  Southern  encampment. 

We  catch  a  momentary  flash  of  this  spirit  in  a  letter 
he  dropped  to  his  mother  while  on  his  way  South. 
It  is  dated  May  4th,  from  Washington. 

"You  will,"  he  writes,  "be  a  little  surprised  to  hear 
that  I  am  in  Washington.  I  am  here  to  enlist  in 
the  cavalry  regiment.  You  see,  a  good  number  of  the 
fellows  from  college  are  going  into  this  thing  and  I 
find  I  cannot  just  stay  in  Cambridge  with  them  going 
away.  Scudder  is  in  it  and  Guy  Murchie,  Dave 
Goodrich,  Charlie  Bull,  Hal  Sayre  and  others,  so 
you  see  I  am  in  good  company.     As  to  the  actual 

SI 


32  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

chance  of  getting  into  any  of  the  fighting  I  can  say 
nothing.  I  hope  we  are  sent  where  there  is  some  kind  of 
a  scrap.  I  cannot  help  it,  Mother,  and  I  do  not  think 
you  would  want  your  boy  to  stay  at  home,  being  a 
good  citizen,  while  other  friends  all  went  to  war. 
Washington,  I  think,  is  beautiful.  It  is  summer  here. 
I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  the  place,  the  monument, 
a  negro  driver  and  a  beautiful  cheap  lunch,  also  a 
pretty  telegraph  girl.  I  am  afraid  it  will  be  hard  to 
get  my  letters  off  regularly  but  I  will  write  you  when- 
ever I  get  the  chance.  I  am  thinking  of  taking  a 
banjo  with  us  to  serenade  dark-eyed  senoritas  (the 
last  word  may  be  wrongly  spelled).  I  have  finished 
my  work  for  Mr.  Job  and  sent  it  to  him.  I  expect 
to  find  some  fine  material  for  stories  in  the  business 
if  it  does  not  fall  through.  Good-bye,  Mother,  I  will 
write  soon  again." 

The  Spanish-American  War  did  not  come  up  to 
Scull's  expectations.  Instead  of  fluttering  guidons, 
flashing  sabres  and  wild  charges  through  Spanish 
lines,  the  Skipper  experienced  nothing  but  the  drudg- 
ery of  camp  life,  the  hard  routine  of  drill,  and  the 
misery  of  being  left  behind  when  part  of  his  regiment 
embarked  for  Cuba.  Then  illness  and  a  slow  con- 
valescence ended  his  Harvard  dream  of  glory.  But 
with  all  its  disappointments,  the  war  brought  Scull 
into  contact  with  as  remarkable  a  body  of  men  from 
all  walks  of  life,  East  and  West,  as  was  ever  brought 
together  in  one  regiment — The  Rough  Riders,  offi- 
cially known  as  The  First  United  States  Volunteer 


HAHNAKI),    IS!»s 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS  33 

Cavalry,  Colonel  Leonard  Wood  commanding,  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt,  Lieut. -Colonel. 

The  regiment  was  assembled,  in  April  and  May, 
at  San  Antonio,  Texas,  recruited  there  and  organized 
into  troops  and  squadrons.  Military  training  was 
also  started  there,  most  of  the  men  being  horsemen 
from  boyhood  and  used  to  arms  and  the  saddle  under 
all  conditions.  From  San  Antonio  this  regiment  was 
taken  by  train  to  Tampa,  Florida,  where  it  lay  for 
several  weeks,  when  two  squadrons  of  it,  dismounted, 
went  across  to  Cuba  with  the  first  expeditionary 
forces  under  Shafter,  the  third  squadron,  which  was 
Scull's,  being  left  behind  with  the  horses. 

On  May  9th,  from  San  Antonio,  Scull  writes  his 
mother  of  his  arrival,  that  he  is  well  and  must  hurry 
to  report  to  Colonel  Wood. 

On  May  12th  he  wrote  again  that  he  was  in  camp 
with  the  regiment  at  the  Fair  Grounds,  was  well  and 
happy,  and  that  his  mother  need  not  worry  about  his 
health  for  in  the  life  they  were  leading  it  would  be 
impossible  to  be  in  anything  but  the  best  of  condition. 
He  adds: 

"Hal  Sayre  is  second  lieutenant  in  my  troop.  The 
men  of  the  regiment  are  mostly  ranchmen,  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  and  about  as  fine  a  lot  of  men  as  I  have  ever 
met.  Rough  they  may  be,  nor  do  they  fall  behind  the 
cavalry  reputation  in  the  use  of  cuss  words,  but  I  was 
surprised  to  find  how  carefully  they  speak  and  what 
excellent  fellows  they  really  are.  We  are  awakened 
by  the  trumpet  at  about  dawn,  then  after  roll-call  we 


34  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

take  the  horses  to  water  and  feed  and  clean  them. 
The  food  is  not  quite  as  good  as  I  get  at  home,  though 
it  tastes  mighty  good  after  working.  We  drill  about 
three  or  four  times  a  day,  and  lights  must  be  out  at 
nine  in  the  evening.  The  men  are  full  of  fun,  good 
natured,  and  willing  to  help  one  like  me.  When  they 
address  me  they  either  call  me  'Pardner'  or  'Scull'  or 
'Skipper.'  I  cannot  say  when  I  shall  get  a  chance  to 
write  again,  so  if  you  do  not  hear  from  me  please  do 
not  jump  at  the  conclusion  that  my  fingers  are  broken 
and  prevent  me  from  writing." 

The  next  letter  four  days  later  describes  his  first 
trick  at  guard  duty.  He  says,  "It  was  strange  work 
for  me,  this  watching  a  picket  line  of  about  seventy 
horses.  Every  now  and  then  they  Avould  become  tan- 
gled up  and  I  would  have  to  straighten  them  out, 
speaking  to  them  to  keep  them  quiet  in  the  meantime. 
These  horses  have  strange  notions.  Sometimes  the 
men  sing  to  them  to  prevent  a  stampede.  When  I 
came  off  duty  my  mind  ran  to  horses,  and  in  moments 
when  I  was  not  thinking  of  something  particular  I 
was  unconsciously  seeing  horses ;  at  night  I  dreamed 
of  them  in  tangles.  I  have  now  been  put  on  kitchen 
duty  and  my  particular  job  is  to  fry  steaks." 

There  is  no  letter  to  his  mother  between  May  16th 
and  June  3rd,  at  which  time  he  writes  from  Tampa, 
Florida,  saying  the  regiment  reached  there  the  night 
before  after  a  five  days  journey  by  train.    He  says : 

"There  is  a  great  swarm  of  soldiers  here,  and  bustle 
and  confusion  exist  everywhere.  The  life  of  a  private 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS  35 

is  not  altogether  a  pleasant  one,  yet,  you  know  mother 
that  doing  just  such  a  thing  as  this  is  when  I  am  most 
contented.  I  do  not  want  you  to  worry  about  my 
going  to  Cuba.  The  fever  is  by  no  means  so  terrible 
as  it  is  made  out  to  be,  and  I  am  only  in  a  volunteer 
regiment,  after  all.  I  dare  say  I  have  told  you  this 
before  but  I  am  so  afraid  you  will  worry  where  there 
is  no  cause.  There  are  many  things  about  this  regi- 
ment I  should  like  to  tell  you,  though  now  to  speak 
of  such  things  would  be  disobeying  the  Articles  of 

War." 

The  next  letter  dated  June  12th  states  the  news 

of  his  great  disappointment. 

''Two-thirds  of  the  regiment,"  he  writes,  "are  now 
aboard  the  transport  waiting  to  sail  for  Cuba  as  in- 
fantry. INIost  of  the  men  are  all  broken  up  over  this 
turn  of  affairs. 

"I  have  traveled  some  during  the  past  month,  com- 
ing East  from  Texas.  Part  of  the  time  I  was  a  guard 
standing  on  a  platform  car  with  a  rifle  and  a  .45  on 
my  hip,  a  train  of  armed  men  rumbling  along  through 
a  country,  through  green  fields  and  woods  where  the 
grey  moss  hung  in  masses.  Sometunes  I  would  be 
there  at  dawn,  sometimes  when  the  sun  was  setting. 
The  train  stopped  regularly  for  watering  of  the 
horses.  This  job  took  about  five  hours;  the  train 
also  had  to  stop  when  a  horse  fell  do^^m  in  the  box 
cars.     It  was  a  memorable  trip. 

"We  had  five  days  of  this,  and  now  we  are  left  be- 
hind, but  the  regiment  is  a  cavalry  regiment  and  as 


36  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

soon  as  our  troops  have  gained  a  foothold  in  Cuba 
the  rest  of  us  will  go  over  with  the  horses.  The  only 
thing  I  am  afraid  of  is  that  the  war  will  be  over  before 
I  get  there.  Our  Colonel  is  a  fine  man.  He  gave 
me  the  job  of  keeping  a  record  of  the  Harvard  men 
in  the  regiment,  which  relieves  me  from  kitchen  duty. 
'Bart'  Hayes  (his  Harvard  roommate)  writes  that 
'Copey'  (Copeland,  Harvard  professor)  has  told  him 
that  my  criticism  has  been  accepted  by  the  Atlantic. 
The  banjo  is  a  great  success,  and  the  song  these  men 
like  the  best  is  'The  Prodigal  Son.' 

"  *Gosh,'  one  fellow  exclaimed,  'that  young  feller 
meant  harm  sure.'  While  still  in  San  Antonio  one  of 
the  men  fell  asleep  on  guard.  I  was  on  guard  that 
night  and  we  had  a  hard  time  of  it  because  they  put 
on  extra  posts  without  increasing  the  number  of  men. 
As  we  were  not  in  hostile  country  the  man  only  got 
six  months  in  prison.  If  we  had  been  in  Cuba  he 
probably  would  have  been  shot." 

The  days  drifted  on  through  June.  Things  were 
doing  in  Cuba  but  only  rumors  and  camp  routine 
came  to  those  left  behind  at  Tampa  and  the  other 
army  bases  along  the  U.  S.  coastline.  Tampa  be- 
came a  hotbed  of  fever  and  discontent.  In  Scull's 
particular  group  of  cronies,  Dave  Goodrich  became 
Second  Lieutenant  of  D  Troop,  Bill  Scudder  ob- 
tained a  transfer  to  the  dynamite  gun  detachment 
destined  for  service  in  Cuba,  and  Hal  Sayre  became 
post  adjutant.  Referring  to  him.  Scull  says  in  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  "the  poor  boy's  heart  is  broken," 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS  37 

and  adds  for  himself  that  she  can  have  no  idea  of  the 
miserable  feeling  that  grips  him  because  of  being  left 
behind.  He  keeps  assuring  her  that  he  is  well  and  in 
one  of  his  letters  gives  in  detail  the  number  of  doctors 
who  may  be  relied  upon  in  case  of  fever  attack  or  any 
other  illness. 

On  June  24th  he  wrote  his  mother  recalling  that 
the  day  before  was  Class  Day  at  Harvard  and  adds: 
"As  for  the  Class  Day  Poem  there  will  be  none.  I 
was  riding  out  to  camp  about  sunset  when  this  oc- 
curred to  me,  and  down  here  it  seems  strange  to  think 
of  the  spreads,  the  muslin  dresses,  and  the  Japanese 
lanterns !" 

July  came  and  still  no  movement  of  the  waiting 
troops  southward.  Writing  on  July  10th  Scull  com- 
forts his  mother  with  the  thought  that  the  heat  in 
Tampa  is  no  worse  than  in  Massachusetts,  which  was 
apparently  having  a  hot  spell  that  Summer,  but  he 
adds  that  the  monotony  was  getting  on  his  nerves 
although  he  and  his  pals  were  hoping  with  the  com- 
ing of  each  new  day  to  hear  of  orders  to  embark,  if 
not  for  Cuba  at  least  for  Porto  Rico. 

"I  don't  think,"  he  writes,  "I  have  ever  told  you 
how  we  live.  Each  troop  has  its  own  street,  the  tents 
on  one  side  and  the  picket  line  on  the  other,  so  that 
all  through  the  camp  first  comes  a  row  of  tents,  then 
a  line  of  horses.  My  saddle  and  bridle  are  at  the  door 
of  the  tent,  my  rifle  and  revolver  just  inside,  and  my 
horse  is  tied  to  the  picket  line  in  front  of  me.  And 
at  night,  with  my  head  outside,  I  can  look  up  at  the 


38  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

stars  and  hear  the  crunch,    crunch   of   the    feeding 
horses." 

There  was  another  letter  to  his  mother  about  this 
time  telling  her  that  he  was  well  and  again  assuring 
her  that  there  was  no  danger  of  disease  and  then 
came  a  long  lapse.  Scull  had  gone  down  with  fever 
and  dysentery.  No  letter  went  forward  to  his  mother 
until  August  2nd  and  this  bore  the  date  of  Tallulah, 
in  the  mountains  of  Georgia,  where  Scull  had  been 
sent  for  treatment.  His  condition  was  worse  than 
his  family  knew.  If  he  realized  it  himself  he  did  not 
indicate  it  in  his  letters  to  his  mother.  This  is  the 
way  he  breaks  the  news  to  her: 

"I  am  afraid  this  letter  is  a  little  overdue,  but  you 
see  I  have  been  traveling.  I  got  a  little  run  down  in 
health  while  I  was  in  Tampa  and  as  there  was  no 
chance  of  our  going  even  to  Porto  Rico,  the  Adju- 
tant sent  me  up  here  to  get  fat. 

"It  seems  that  the  war  was  about  over  and  I  have 
learned  how  to  groom  a  horse  very  nicely!  I  never 
before  ran  up  against  so  much  hard  luck.  This  place 
here  is  interesting.  Everybody  is  queer.  I  am  liv- 
ing in  a  small  house  away  from  the  bustle  of  the 
street,  so  to  speak,  with  a  great  many  vines  to  keep 
the  sun  off  the  piazza.  It  reminds  me  sometimes  of 
the  old  house  at  Beverly  Farms.  A  doctor  o^vns  the 
house.  He  is  a  thorough  gentleman  and  has  been  a 
surgeon  in  the  English  Navy  for  a  number  of  years. 
Then  there  is  the  old  Major  who  is  very  fond  of 
books  and  he  and  I  every    night    discuss    religion. 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS  39 

People  come  to  visit  him.  There  are  three  contempt- 
ible cads  speaking  with  him  now.  They  have  come  up 
from  the  Cliff  House,  the  swell  hotel.  One  looks  like 
a  barber,  another  like  a  groom  and  the  other  is  a  fool 
jackass  of  a  boy  who  tries  to  be  funny  making  puns. 
I  wanted  to  shoot  the  whole  crowd  so  I  had  to  come 
away.  This  is  a  curious  town.  It  begins  at  the  top 
of  a  short  hill  and  ends  at  the  bottom.  There  are 
only  twenty  voters.  The  other  night  somebody  tried 
to  arrest  somebody  else,  and  in  consequence  the  jail 
became  full  of  prisoners  and  my  friend  the  doctor  was 
kept  busy  sewing  up  cuts.  The  Major  just  passed 
by  where  I  am  writing  and  said  in  his  poor  old  voice, 
'I  think  this  is  the  coolest  spot  in  the  city!*  I  was 
wrong  perhaps  when  I  called  it  a  town." 

In  a  couple  of  weeks  Scull  had  recovered  suffi- 
ciently to  leave  this  town  and  start  north  via  Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  where  he  was  picked  up  by  the 
squadron  of  Rough  Riders  from  Tampa  coming 
north  on  the  way  to  its  new  camp  at  Montauk  Point, 
Long  Island,  where  it  was  to  join  the  rest  of  the 
regiment,  on  its  way  by  transport  up  from  Santiago. 
On  September  15th  he  wrote  his  mother  that  he  had 
been  mustered  out,  and  that  he  was  again  a  free 
American  citizen.  He  mentioned  the  sadness  in  part- 
ing from  his  bunkies  and  added: 

"There  was  a  man  in  our  troop  who  came  from 
Bohn,  Switzerland,  and  this  I  never  knew  until  the 
day  before  we  left  when  I  sat  eating  dinner  beside 
him  in  the  kitchen.     Such  is  the  way  we  have  lived 


40  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

together  for  four  long  months,  each  one  knowing  the 
next  man  well  and  what  he  stood  for,  asking  no  ques- 
tions as  to  former  times  and  telling  nothing,  a  life 
in  which  the  present  was  the  sole  thought  of  all,  and 
each  happening  affecting  each  man.  You  can  see 
how  closely  we  lived  in  that  little  company.  I  intend 
to  go  to  Boston  tonight  and  in  that  vicinity  I  will 
wait  for  your  coming  home." 

For  a  picture  of  Scull  as  others  saw  and  knew  him 
with  the  Rough  Riders,  we  have  the  letter  of  a  fellow 
trooper,  who  was  in  school  with  Scull  and  an  intimate 
of  his  after  leaving  college  in  later  life.  Gardiner  had 
not  seen  much  of  the  Skipper,  however,  between  his 
school  days  and  the  morning  Gardiner  walked  into 
the  Rough  Riders'  camp  at  San  Antonio,  Texas, 
early  in  May,  1898. 

"The  Skipper,"  he  writes,  "was  somewhat  changed 
in  appearance  as  he  had  grown  a  beard.  I  asked  him 
what  would  be  a  good  Troop  in  which  to  enlist,  and 
he  promptly  replied  'C  Troop.'  This  troop  was  raised 
in  Arizona  and  was  made  up  mostly  of  cowboys, 
miners,  railroad  men  and  a  general  sprinkling  of  the 
type  of  man  one  would  expect  to  find  in  small  coun- 
try towns  such  as  Yuma,  Tombstone  and  Phoenix. 
Scull  pronounced  them  all  splendid  fellows  and  con- 
sequently I  went  in  with  them,  although  I  would 
have  joined  in  any  event,  simply  to  be  in  the  same 
troop  with  Scull.  He  stood  out  as  the  most  marked 
man  in  the  whole  Troop  of  sixty-nine  men,  only  four 
of  whom  were  from  East  of  the  Mississippi. 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS,    1898 


THE    ROUGH    RIDERS  41 

"During  that  whole  Summer,  which  developed 
many  trying  times  owing  to  the  amount  of  sickness, 
the  heat,  the  flies  and  the  discomforts  of  camp  life, 
Scull  was  never  known  to  utter  a  complaint.  He  was 
a  host  in  himself  and  was  looked  on  as  by  far — in  a 
way — the  most  popular  man  in  the  troop.  Men  from 
the  plains  who  had  no  knowledge  of  an  Eastern  col- 
lege man,  fairly  worshipped  him.  Typical  of  their 
feeling  was  the  remark  made  once  by  a  man  named 

(who  at   that   time  was    perhaps    forty-five 

or  forty-eight  years  of  age,  who  had  been  a  cow- 
puncher  all  his  life  and  who — as  far  as  we  could  judge 
— was  about  the  'hardest'  specimen  in  the  troop) 
when  he  remarked  'If  Ah  were  a-goin'  through  a 
blazer  and  it  looked  as  though  the  chances  was  slim, 
an'  Ah  wanted  some  backing.  Ah  would  be  a-pickin' 
Scull  to  see  me  through.'  By  a  'blazer'  he  meant  a 
shooting  scrape.  When  put  his  seal  of  ap- 
proval on  a  man  there  was  no  question  but  what  he 
was  a  man. 

"During  the  Summer  Scull  was  taken  ill  with  a 
bad  case  of  dysentery  and  was  so  weak  as  a  result 
that  he  was  hardly  able  to  crawl  around  the  camp. 
I  well  remember  one  day  when  he  mounted  a  horse 
which  was  supposed  to  be  reasonably  amenable,  but 
who  proved  far  from  such,  and  on  observing  the  horse 
start  out  on  a  bucking  matcli,  trying  to  dislodge 
Scull,  several  men  rushed  up  and  seized  the  horse 
by  the  bridle  to  take  Scull  off,  knowing  as  they  did 
how  weak  he  was;   but  such  a  procedure  was  not  to 


42  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

his  liking  and  he  yelled  at  everybody  to  get  out  of 
the  road  and  leave  him  alone.  The  horse  finally 
threw  him  and  had  be  gone  a  foot  farther  he  unques- 
tionably would  have  been  killed.  (He  landed  along- 
side of  the  stump  of  a  tree.)  He  was  picked  up,  all 
out  of  breath,  boiling  mad  and  with  his  whole  mind 
bent  on  mounting  again,  which  he  finally  did,  in  spite 
of  all  protests,  and  he  rode  the  pitching  animal  to  a 
standstill. 

"Scull,  as  I  said  before,  was  unique.  When  travel- 
ing in  the  train  or  on  horseback  his  impedimenta  con- 
sisted first  and  foremost  of  a  tooth-brush  stuck  in  his 
hat,  and  a  banjo  done  up  in  cloth,  from  which  he 
was  rarely  separated.  Many  an  evening  he  would  sit 
on  a  bale  of  hay  with  the  best  part  of  the  troop  sit- 
ting 'round  about  him  on  the  ground,  and  would  sing 
songs  that  never  failed  to  please  his  audiences. 

"He  finally  became  so  weak  that  he  was  sent  into 
town  by  Lieutenant  Sayre,  and  there  lived  for  a 
couple  of  weeks.  I  shortly  afterwards  joined  him. 
He  did  not  seem  to  pick  up  at  all,  and  I  recollect  one 
day  when  we  were  about  expecting  orders  to  join  the 
rest  of  the  Regiment  in  Cuba,  that  Sayre  came  to  our 
boarding-house  and  knowing  what  condition  Scull 
was  in  ordered  him  to  the  mountains  of  Georgia. 
Scull  remonstrated  and  with  due  formality  toward  his 
former  college  mate,  begged  that  he  be  not  sent  away, 
for  fear  we  should  receive  orders  to  move  to  Cuba 
and  he  not  be  on  hand  to  go.  Sayre  told  him  that  he 
was  not  in  condition  to  go  to  Cuba  even  if  he  received 


THE    ROUGH   RIDERS  43 

orders,  which  so  irritated  Scull  that  for  a  minute  he 
forgot  his  position  and  with  tears  in  his  eyes — which 
came  largely  from  the  force  which  he  put  into  his 
remarks — he  fairly  yelled  at  Sayre,  'My  God,  Lieu- 
tenant, there  aren't  men  enough  in  this  whole  damn 
regiment  to  keep  me  from  going  to  Cuba !' 

"Sayre  calmed  him  do^^m  as  best  he  could  and  he 
was  finally  persuaded  that  he  simply  had  to  go  away. 
After  this  interview,  to  which  I  was  a  witness.  Scull 
said  to  me  as  we  walked  back  to  the  cottage : 

"  'By  gad,  Penn,  wouldn't  it  make  you  mad  to  have 
a  fellow  that  you  could  lick  only  a  few  months  back 
now  come  and  order  you  to  do  this,  and  do  that,  and 
he  had  got  my  hands  tied !' 

"Scull  went  away  and  when  he  rejoined  us  again 
he  was  a  different  man,  having  picked  up  wonder- 
fully; but  our  squadron  of  the  regiment  never  got 
orders  to  join  the  other  two  in  Cuba.  I  do  not  think 
I  have  ever  known  a  man  who  was  so  universally  liked 
by  those  who  met  him.  The  indefinable  attraction 
which  he  seemed  to  exercise  over  those  who 
laiew  him,  even  slightly,  drew  to  him  many  friends. 
At  times  he  was  moody  and  would  talk  very  little, 
but  when  the  spirit  moved  he  was  most  communica- 
tive, but  at  all  times  he  liked  to  be  in  the  company 
of  his  fellow  men." 

After  being  mustered  out  of  the  army  Scull  fin- 
ished recuperating  with  the  Greenoughs  at  West 
Chop  near  Boston  that  Autumn,  waiting  for  his 
mother's  return  from  Switzerland,  and  while  loafing 


U  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

here  on  the  shore  took  up  his  writing  again  working 
on  the  story:  "Left  Behind."  From  West  Chop  he 
went  back  to  Cambridge  and  put  in  some  time  studying 
surgery,  trying  to  learn  how  to  tie  up  a  cut,  and  ban- 
dage a  broken  bone.  He  writes  of  attending  opera- 
tions in  the  Boston  City  Hospital  and  his  interest  in 
watching  the  surgeons  work.  He  saw  Walter  Page 
of  the  Atlantic,  who  asked  him  to  do  some  more  short 
stories.  He  also  wrote  editorials  for  the  Harvard 
Crimson.  About  this  time  he  began  to  notice  girls. 
In  one  of  his  letters  to  his  mother  he  wrote: 

"I  have  fallen  in  love  again.  This  time  it  is  a  girl 
I  saw  on  the  car,  very  beautiful  with  jet  black  eyes. 
I  only  saw  her  once  and  do  not  know  who  she  is  or 
where  she  comes  from?  It  is  strange  that  just  in 
passing  we  remember  someone  and  think  of  that 
someone  more  than  of  a  person  we  have  known  for 
years." 

That  Winter  Scull  worked  at  his  writing. 


Chapter  V 

BOER  WAR— 1900 

Steffens,  City  Editor  of  the  New  York  Globe 
and  Commercial  Advertiser,  encouraged  Scull  in  his 
desire  to  go  to  South  Africa  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Boer  War.  The  difficulty  was  to  finance  his  passage 
there.  Newspapers  as  a  rule  are  close  figurers  on 
expense  accounts  and  the  Globe  did  not  see  its  way 
clear  to  gamble  on  the  chance  of  the  row  in  South 
Africa  lasting  long  enough  to  pay  to  send  Scull  all 
that  distance.  Scull,  securing  the  promise  of  the 
paper  to  print  what  stories  he  sent  them,  got  his 
mother  to  finance  the  trip,  and  lost  no  time  in  out- 
fitting. He  bought  his  ticket,  went  to  his  rooms, 
packed  up  his  belongings  and  sailed  the  next  day  on 
the  S.S.  "New  York"  for  Southampton,  with  only 
a  few  necessities  packed  in  a  suitcase.  His  obtaining 
of  his  mother's  assistance  and  his  determination  to 
go  must  have  taken  very  little  time.  He  wrote  his 
mother  only  a  few  days  before  he  sailed,  and  in  the 
letter  he  makes  no  mention  of  South  Africa  or  the  war, 
but  tells  her  of  going  up  on  the  Ramapo  Mountains 
to  find  a  wild  community  that  lived  like  primitive  and 
barbaric  mountaineers,  and  of  his  disgust  at  finding 
them  peacefully  gathered  in  a  church  and  at  service. 

45 


46  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

The  man  with  whom  Scull  was  livmg  at  that  time 
said  he  came  back  to  his  rooms  after  dinner  one  eve- 
ning and  found  the  Skipper  very  busy  packing  a 
trunk.  He  asked  casually  if  he  was  going  away,  and 
the  Skipper  grunted  an  affirmative  and  continued 
with  his  v/ork.  He  turned  in  and  awakened  about 
three  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  find  the  lights  in  the 
room  still  burning.  He  jumped  up  to  turn  them 
out  and  found  Scull  still  at  his  work  and  the  room 
turned  topsy-turvy. 

"Looks  as  though  you  were  going  to  move,"  he  said. 

"Yep,"  answered  Scull. 

"Where  to?" 

"South  Africa,"  grunted  the  Skipper. 

He  sailed  early  that  morning.  His  roommate 
didn't  return  to  bed  but  stayed  up  and  helped  him 
to  get  the  rest  of  his  stuff  packed  and  ready 
to  send  home  to  Boston.  They  bolted  a  scanty  break- 
fast and  Scull  just  had  time  to  catch  the  ship  before 
she  sailed.  The  only  letter  of  introduction,  except 
his  newspaper  credentials,  that  Scull  carried  was  one 
from  Governor  Theodore  Roosevelt,  which  is  repro- 
duced on  page  52.  This  Scull  never  used  to  help 
him  through  the  British  War  Office. 

A  Boston  publication,  The  City  and  State,  of  June 
14,  1900,  in  referring  to  Scull's  efforts  in  getting  to 
the  scene  of  this  war,  said : 

"This  young  man  started  for  the  Transvaal  with 
no  natural  advantages  except  a  Harvard  education, 
some  money  and  credentials  as  correspondent  of  the 


BOER   WAR  47 

New  York  Commercial  and  Advertiser.  In  London 
he  applied  in  vain  for  a  correspondent's  pass ;  delay 
after  delay  occurred;  meanwhile  Buller  had  left  the 
coast.  'Give  it  up/  advised  the  newspaper  men  of 
London,  'your  pass  will  come  too  late.' 

"  'I'll  go  without  a  pass,'  said  Mr.  Scull. 

"  'Preposterous,'  said  the  law-respecting  Britons. 

"Mr.  Scull  sailed  for  Capetown,  was  detained 
there,  slipped  into  a  rifle  brigade,  and  made  his  way 
to  the  front — without  a  pass.  Another  correspon- 
dent fell  ill  and  was  recalled.  Mr.  Scull  took  that  cor- 
respondent's place. 

"He  started  from  America  on  an  errand  appar- 
ently hopeless,  and,  as  Richard  Harding  Davis  wrote 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  when  Buller's  forces  entered 
Ladysmith,  Scull  was  the  first  man  within  the  town." 

Scull's  adventures  in  this  war,  where  he  went  and 
how  he  worked,  must  remain  a  blank  unless  we  can 
locate  some  of  the  English  or  American  correspon- 
dents with  whom  he  messed,  or  were  attached  to  the 
same  army.  Scull  did  not  stay  long  with  any  de- 
tachment. He  soon  discovered  that  if  he  was  going  to 
get  anywhere  and  see  anything  he  must  cut  loose 
by  himself.  This  he  did.  He  has  told  several  of  us 
the  way  he  went  about  it,  how  in  order  to  do  this  he 
had  to  forage  for  himself  and  his  horse;  to  practically 
live  on  the  country;  and  a  country  at  that  almost 
stripped  by  the  raids  of  the  contending  forces.  So 
while  these  stories  remain  in  memory,  in  a  general 
way,  the  detail  which  is  so  important  is  lost.      In 


48  GUY   HAMILTON   SCULL 

Scull's  writings  from  the  field  were  some  of  the  best 
things  he  ever  did.  We  know  he  was  the  first  man 
from  the  relief  columns  into  beleagured  Lady- 
smith.  Richard  Harding  Davis  himself  generously 
gave  Scull  credit  for  that. 

The  Chicago  Record,  one  of  the  newspapers  for 
which  Scull  was  writing,  in  reporting  this  event  states 
that  its  own  correspondent  (Scull)  was  so  modest 
that  he  failed  to  report  his  most  notable  achievement, 
and  continuing,  states  that  the  news  came  in  a  private 
letter  from  Richard  Harding  Davis,  who  wrote  from 
Ladysmith  under  the  date  of  March  1st  as  follows: 

"I  rode  twelve  miles  at  a  gallop  to  be  the  first  man 
in  Ladysmith,  but  was  beaten  by  Scull,  Harvard  '98, 
the  correspondent  of  the  Chicago  Record.  He  was 
the  first  to  enter  the  city." 

Some  two  months  later  Rennet  Rurleigh,  a  noted 
English  war  correspondent,  wiring  from  Johannes- 
burgh,  states  that  he  and  an  American  named  Guy 
Scull  entered  Johannesburgh  the  night  before  Gen- 
eral Roberts  occupied  that  city,  made  a  tour  of  it 
unmolested  by  the  armed  burghers,  and  returned  in 
safety  to  the  Rritish  camp. 

A  dispatch  from  Albany,  N.  Y.,  on  the  same  day 
states  that  Governor  Theodore  Roosevelt  proudly 
called  the  legislative  corespondents'  attention  to  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  first  two  men  to  enter  Johannes- 
burgh ahead  of  the  Rritish  army  was  an  American, 
a  graduate  of  Harvard,  and  an  ex-corporal  of  the 
Rough  Riders. 


BOER   WAR  49 

"I  remember  well,"  writes  one  of  his  fellow  war  cor- 
respondents, "the  first  time  I  saw  Guy  Scull  in  Africa. 
It  was  after  the  British  occupation  of  Bloomfontein 
in  the  Orange  Free  State.  We  were  on  the  march 
towards  Brandtford,  where  the  Boers  had  held  the 
last  meeting  of  their  Government  south  of  the  Trans- 
vaal. It  was  a  scorching  hot  day.  I  was  riding 
slowly  along  with  an  Afrikander  scout,  named  Bley- 
lock;  suddenly  he  pointed  out  a  strange-looking 
figure,  astride  a  nondescript  horse,  with  two  worn  old 
saddle-bags  and  a  blanket  roll  dangling  at  his  flanks ; 
balanced  across  the  top,  tied  with  a  bit  of  old  rope, 
was  a  leather  banjo  case,  almost  as  dilapidated  as  the 
saddle-bags. 

"  'There's  a  countryman  of  yours,  and  a  good  war 
correspondent,  I  should  say,'  remarked  Bleylock. 
*Ever  met  him?  Remarkable  sort  of  chap!  Has  a 
marvelous  way  of  getting  into  scrapes  and  getting 
out  again.' 

"The  figure  on  horseback  turned  in  the  saddle.  I 
got  a  glimpse  of  a  clear-cut  profile  with  high  cheek- 
bones, a  Grecian  nose  and  deep-set  gray  eyes.  Where 
had  I  seen  that  face  before?    Suddenly  it  came  back 

to  me !    Guy  Scull  of  Harvard!    I  remembered 

having  met  him  on  a  visit  to  Cambridge,  and  having 
passed  an  evening  at  one  of  the  clubs  where  'The 
Skipper'  had  done  his  share  of  the  entertaining.  No 
one  who  ever  saw  or  met  Guy  Scull  would  ever  forget 
him.  He  had  a  remarkable  face  that  lingered  in  one's 
memory.    It  suggested,  in  a  measure,  the  strange,  il- 


50  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

lusive  quality  of  the  man  himself.  It  was  a  mixture  of 
the  spiritual  and  the  dare-devil ;  the  face  of  the  poet, 
the  artist,  the  observer  and  the  born  adventurer  and 
man  of  action. 

"Guy  Scull  took  a  lot  of  knowing.  No  doubt  there 
lived  hardly  a  man  who  would  have  attracted  such 
quick  attention,  and  yet  who  might  have  been  so  eas- 
ily misjudged.  Shy,  and  yet  forceful,  retiring  and 
reticent,  yet  fearless,  and  gifted  with  great  powers  of 
expression,  he  was  more  or  less  of  a  paradox.  Surely 
to  many  he  was  a  puzzle  through  those  long  months 
following  the  British  Army  on  its  dusty  marches 
across  the  South  African  Veldt. 

"But  to  get  back  to  the  story:  As  soon  as  I  had 
recognized  him,  I  trotted  up  and  recalled  myself.  At 
first  I  thought  he  had  forgotten  who  I  was,  but  as  I 
spoke  of  the  meeting  at  Cambridge  his  face  lightened 
up,  and  with  that  funny  little  twisted  smile  of  his,  he 
said: 

"  'That  was  a  great  night  we  had,  wasn't  it?' 

"I  pointed  to  the  banjo  behind  him.  *I  see  you 
brought  her  with  you,'  I  remarked. 

"  'Yes,'  said  Scull;  'Some  people  think  it's  the  only 
baggage  I've  got.'  Surely  for  a  few  weeks,  I  myself 
thought  that  the  old  instrument  and  the  meagre  sad- 
dle-bags were  all  his  impedimenta,  for  to  all  appear- 
ances, he  and  the  old  horse  were  going  it  alone. 

"As  we  rode  on  together,  I  could  not  help  but  take 
in  carefully  'The  Skipper's'  make-up.  It  was  cus- 
tomary for  the  war  correspondents  to  wear  a  uniform 


BOER   WAR  51 

that  was  really  semi-official.  But  with  a  careless  dis- 
regard for  convention,  which  was  one  of  his  charac- 
teristics, this  particular  correspondent  disdained,  for 
the  most  part,  all  military  trappings.  He  was  dressed 
in  an  old  pair  of  corduroy  breeches  shoved  down  into 
most  disreputable  boots,  and  wore  an  old  short  over- 
coat that  was  sun-burned  and  washed  out  by  the  rain 
into  a  light,  indescribable  pea-green  and  blue,  and 
moreover,  it  was  principally  attached  to  his  person 
by  another  rope  in  lieu  of  a  belt. 

"  'Had  a  funny  adventure  just  now,'  observed  'The 
Skipper,'  after  we  had  chatted  a  little  about  the  war 
and  the  weather.  'Was  arrested  for  being  a  Boer 
spy  and  taken  up  to  headquarters  for  identification. 
Gee!  I  thought  I  was  going  to  be  shot  at  first! 
But  I  got  a  good  story  out  of  it.' 

"'A^Tiat  mess  and  what  unit  are  you  attached  to?' 
I  asked. 

"  'Oh,  nowhere  in  particular — I  just  float  around,' 
he  replied.  'Good  fellows,  these  Britishers.  They 
treat  me  fine.' 

"We  dined  together  that  night  in  the  open  air. 
He  tethered  his  old  horse  close  to  mine,  and  as  the 
evening  fell,  he  took  the  patched-up  banjo  out  of  its 
case  and  sang  'My  Name,  It  Is  Jack  Hall,'  picking 
and  plucking  at  the  old  instrument,  in  an  easy,  slur- 
ring fashion  that  seemed  to  go  with  his  style  of 
singing. 

"That  was  one  of  many  evenings  we  spent  together. 
It  was  a  delight  to  have  hhn  sitting  there  and  to  hear 


52  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

him  talk  and  reminisce.  When  once  he  got  started 
his  shyness  seemed  to  leave  him. 

"The  British  officers  did  like  him  and  he  was  wel- 
come at  any  mess.  It  doesn't  take  an  Englishman 
long  to  recognize  'class,'  no  matter  how  it  is  dressed, 
and  they  never  made  a  mistake  in  sizing  up  'The 
Skipper.'  I  remember  one  night — it  was  the  evening 
of  Guy  Fawkes  day,  the  fifth  of  November.  He 
strolled  up  to  a  group  just  after  they  had  finished 
evening  mess.  He  wore  the  same  old  overcoat,  and, 
I  think,  the  same  old  piece  of  rope,  and  very  lately  it 
was  evident  that  for  his  resting-place  he  had  sought 
a  straw  stack  or  a  hay  mow. 

"A  shout  of  welcome  rose. 

"  'Gentlemen,'  observed  the  Major,  bringing  him 
up  to  the  fireside,  'Here  he  is!'  and  observing  the 
straw  and  general  make-up,  he  continued,  'Let's  burn 
him  tonight,  in  honor  of  the  day  we  celebrate.' 

"No  one  seemed  to  enjoy  the  joke  better  than  'The 
Skipper'  himself,  and  yet  he  could  be  touchy,  too,  at 
times,  and  especially  if  anyone  ever  offered  him  as- 
sistance. One  of  the  correspondents,  out  of  the  good- 
ness of  his  heart,  proposed  in  rather  an  embarrassed 
way,  to  let  him  have  a  khaki  coat  and  another  pair 
of  riding  breeches  to  replace  his  much-worn  habili- 
ments. 

"  'I've  plenty  of  good  clothes,'  replied  Scull,  'but 
somehow  I  don't  seem  to  connect  up  with  them. 
They're  back  with  the  baggage  somewhere  on  the 
march.' 


THE    UNION    LEAGUE    CLUB 
NEW  YORK 


OcA- 


^^'^^y 


<^     ^C^ 


^^^ 


BOER   WAR  53 

"And  thus  the  story  came  out. 

"He  had  a  half  share  in  a  wagon  and  four  mules 
with  another  correspondent,  an  Englishman,  whose 
forte  seemed  to  be  reporting  all  the  doings  at  Rail 
Head,  for  he  seldom  seemed  to  get  up  into  the  first 
line  and  though  his  name  was  celebrated  as  a  recorder 
of  historical  events,  never  but  once  or  twice  had  he 
been  known  to  be  nearer  than  within  distant  sound  of 
a  battery  in  action. 

"  'The  Skipper'  had  quarreled  with  him  and  had 
parted  company,  regardless  of  the  fact  that  one-half 
of  the  always  belated  outfit  was  his  to  claim  if  he 
had  wished. 

"I  well  remember  the  day  at  Pretoria,  that  his 
wagon  caught  up  with  him,  and  'The  Skipper'  blos- 
somed forth  in  a  bran  new  khaki  suit  and  a  wide  and 
most  becoming  'smasher'  hat.  He  was  a  picture  to 
behold.  But  nothing  would  induce  him  to  have  his 
photograph  taken.  I  firmly  believe  he  was  more 
afraid  of  a  camera  than  he  would  be  of  a  cocked  and 
loaded  revolver. 

"I  have  a  photograph  of  myself,  struggling  des- 
perately with  him,  while  one  of  the  other  correspon- 
dents tried  to  make  a  record  of  'The  Skipper's'  phiz 
and  costume. 

"There  is  neither  time  nor  space  to  relate  his  ad- 
ventures or  to  tell  many  of  the  stories  that  were  woven 
about  him.  But  one  thing  can  be  recorded:  there 
was  no  keener  observer  than  he,  and  no  surer  pen  than 
his  recorded  the  many  sides  and  actions  of  that  little 


54  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

war,  costly  as  it  was  at  the  time — the  little  war  that 
proved  to  be  the  training  ground  and  school  for  that 
army  that,  fourteen  years  later,  outnumbered  eight 
to  one,  held  back  the  German  right  wing,  and 
stopped  the  all  but  victorious  onsweep  toward  Calais 
and  the  coast.  'The  Skipper's  articles  were  always 
worth  reading  and  though  he  said  little  of  himself, 
his  individuality  seemed  to  permeate  them.  No  one 
else  could  have  seen  the  things  the  way  'The  Skip- 
per' saw  them,  or  recorded  them  the  way  he  did." 

Scull's  letters  to  his  mother  cover  the  whole  period 
he  was  in  South  Africa,  but  like  his  other  letters,  they 
are  for  the  most  part  very  brief  and  confined  to  state- 
ments as  to  his  health  and  the  wonderful  recupera- 
tive powers  of  the  country  and  climate  through  which 
the  army  was  passing.  They  date  from  his  sailing 
from  New  York  in  October  of  1899,  and  appar- 
ently the  longer  he  stayed  away  from  his  mother  the 
longer  and  more  interesting  they  became. 

Extracts  from  some  of  these  letters  follow  in  the 
order  in  which  they  were  written; 

Frere  Station, 
Jan.  1,  1900. 

Happy  New  Year  to  you  all.  Here  we  are  sent 
back  to  Frere  Station  to  await  further  developments 
in  this  dragged  out  affair  of  a  war.  In  my  last  letter  I 
spoke  of  three  artists  with  whom  I  am  living.  One 
of  them  is  a  man  by  the  name  of  Booth.  When  we 
go  visiting  I  put  on  a  handkerchief  to  conceal  my 
lack  of  a  necktie  and  Booth  puts  in  his  false  front 


BOER   WAR  55 

teeth.  Between  the  tvro  of  us  we  make  a  very  pre- 
sentable appearance.  Booth  and  I  have  found  some 
shade  near  the  river  where  we  do  our  work.  It  is  a 
quiet  summer  afternoon  here.  Herds  of  cattle  are 
grazing  on  the  hillside.  Now  and  then  comes  the  cry 
of  a  bird  or  the  curious  speech  of  a  Kaffir.  Beyond 
the  swish  of  the  river  there  is  nothing  else  to  be  heard. 

Jan.  23,  1900. 

To  begin  with,  I  am  well  and  then  I  want  to  tell 
5''ou  that  I  cannot  write  much  this  week  because  the 
battle  has  kept  me  busy.  Good  luck  to  you  and  much 
love. 

Alandale  Hill, 
Jan.  31,  1900 

The  last  two  weeks  have  been  rather  of  a  rough 
time  with  us.  I  seem  to  stand  any  amount  of  riding 
and  work.  For  five  long  days  a  battle  has  been 
fought  here  and  as  you  know  the  British  were  driven 
back  from  the  hills  and  now  we  are  wondering  whether 
Ladysmith  can  hold  out  until  this  column  can  bring 
about  relief. 

Ladysmith, 
March  8,  1900. 
Here  we  are  in  liadysmith  and  after  all  it  seems 
no  way  out  of  the  general  run  of  things  that  we  should 
be  here.  (Not  a  line  about  his  leaving  the  column 
and  going  ahead  alone  into  the  besieged  city  even 
before  the  Boers  had  retired.)  We  have  had  a  bit 
of  a  rest  and  feel  much  finer  in  health.  The  last  two 
weeks  have  been  rather  of  a  pull.  Of  the  two  stamps 
I  enclose,  one  was  given  me  by  a  man  named  Squire 


56  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

who  was  once  an  actor  and  is  now  a  war  correspon- 
dent—a man  who  when  riding  with  you  along  the 
road  sings  songs  or  recites  parts  of  plays  he  was  once 
in.  The  blue  stamp  I  found  in  a  Boer  trench.  I 
have  received  word  from  Mr.  Stefit'ens  that  my  work 
is  going  well  but  I  am  afraid  that  from  the  great 
press  of  work  I  have  lately  not  been  able  to  keep 
up  to  the  mark.  I  hope  you  are  taking  the  Chicago 
Record  and  clipping  my  articles.  Don't  mind  about 
clipping  the  telegrams.  I  find  that  my  work  here 
has  done  me  a  lot  of  good.  I  find  that  I  can  write 
much  faster  than  before,  but  I  wish  that  I  had  time 
to  put  more  thought  in  my  work. 

Bloomfontein, 
March  24<,  1900 

I  am  afraid  I  have  been  missing  some  mails  latelj^ 
because  I  have  been  traveling  for  the  past  two  weeks 
from  Natal  to  this  place  to  go  with  General  Roberts' 
force.  On  our  journey  from  Kimberly  to  Bloom- 
fontein we  were  compelled  to  go  by  road.  Night  be- 
fore last  we  left  Boshoff  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening. 
Maxwell  (London  Daily  Mail)  and  I  rode  and  our 
luggage  followed  in  cart.  In  this  way  we  traveled 
through  the  night  till  three  o'clock  in  the  morning 
when  we  had  crossed  the  ford  over  the  Modder  River. 
At  five  o'clock,  when  the  dawn  came,  we  started  on 
again  and  traveled  through  most  of  the  day.  Mean- 
while it  rained  and  one  of  the  cart  horses  proved 
balky.  Ahead  of  us  on  either  side  and  behind  us 
there  was  only  a  hopeless  waste  of  land  and  the  hori- 
zon. So,  you  see,  to  ride  24  hours  at  a  stretch,  with 
only  four  hours  sleep,  and  this  after  two  weeks  of 
no  exertion,  proved  in  what  good  condition  I  am. 


BOER   WAR  57 

I  am  afraid  I  swore  at  that  horse  who  balked  m 
crossing  the  Modder.  The  river  was  washing  the 
body  of  the  cart  and  the  stones  were  in  the  bottom  of 
the  stream.  What  possessed  that  horse  to  stop  in  the 
middle  is  more  than  I  can  see.  But,  assuredly,  he  will 
never  go  to  Heaven.  The  driver  had  to  yank  at  the 
horse's  head  while  I  rode  alongside  with  the  water 
high  up  over  the  saddle,  and  lashed  the  horse  with  a 
whip.  It  took  us  over  half  an  hour  to  cross.  We 
expected  some  difficulty  the  first  thirty  miles  out  from 
Boshoff  as  there  were  two  commandoes  of  Boers  in 
the  district  through  which  we  had  to  pass  and  when 
a  dog  barked  or  a  strange  horse  neighed  we  came  to 
a  dead  stop  and  listened  and  talked  and  whispered 
as  though  we  were  actors  in  a  dime  novel  scene.  But, 
all  through  the  night  there  was  not  the  sign  of  a  Boer. 
Before  starting  out  we  had  procured  Boer  passes  as 
far  as  Bloomfontein,  so  if  we  had  actually  been  held 
up  on  patrol  it  would  not  have  mattered;  still,  we 
had  quite  a  time  pretending  there  was  much  cause 
for  excitement. 

Bloomfontein 
March  30th 

All  this  evening  I  have  tried  to  write  my  newspaper 
stuff  but  either  I  am  tired  or  something.  The  words 
won't  come.  The  mail  closes  at  six  tomorrow  evening. 
I  had  better  get  some  sleep  and  start  the  job  early 
in  the  moniing.  There  was  a  small  l)attle  yesterday 
and  we  had  a  long  ride  back  at  night.  I  was  some- 
thing like  fourteen  hours  in  the  saddle  with  only  an 
hour  and  a  half  rest  for  lunch.  So  it  goes  and  I 
rather  wish  it  would  stop  and  let  me  sit  in  a  steamer 
chair,  and  let  me  watch  the  ocean  slide  back,  going 
home. 


58  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

April  14th 
The  army  under  Roberts  is  still  waiting.  There  are 
rumors  of  the  right  and  left  columns  of  the  advance 
moving  up  on  either  side  to  surround  the  Boers.  The 
whole  business  is  very  slow.  There  are  a  large  num- 
ber of  correspondents  here.  A  man  named  Pearse 
of  the  London  Daily  News  and  I  have  become  good 
friends.  He  is  a  very  tall  man  and  a  gentleman 
who  can  talk  well  on  almost  any  subject.  Then  there 
is  Maxwell.  If  you  look  in  the  Illustrated  London 
News  you  will  see  some  drawing  of  the  war  by  F.  A. 
Stewart.  During  the  time  I  was  with  Buller  I  lived 
with  Stewart  and  while  I  was  writing  stories  he  was 
doing  these  same  drawings — three  of  us  working  by 
the  light  of  one  candle.  I  intend  coming  home  di- 
rectly this  show  is  over. 

Bloomfontein, 
April  29th 

Special  Extra: — I  have  not  been  offered  a  com- 
mission on  General  Buller's  staff  nor  enlisted  in  the 
Highlanders.  I  am  still  a  correspondent,  and  in  all 
human  probability  will  continue  so. 

Kroonstad, 
May  14th 

General  Hamilton  is  moving  on  beyond  Pretoria 
and  I  am  compelled  to  go  with  him  with  the  army 
on  the  march.    It  is  impossible  to  do  much  writing. 

Johannesburg, 

June  2nd 

We  expect  now  that  the  war  will  be  finished  in  a 
short  time,  probably  by  the  time  this  reaches  you  I 
will  be  on  my  way  home. 


BOER   WAR  59 

Pretoria, 
June  7th 

We  have  got  to  this  place  at  last.  I  shall  wait 
here  for  at  least  a  week  to  see  what  is  likely  to  hap- 
pen, before  deciding  to  return. 

Evidently  he  did  not  wait  any  longer  than  a  week, 
for  on  June  20th  he  cabled  his  mother  at  North  East 
Harbor,  Maine,  U.  S.  A.,  that  he  had  arrived  at 
Southampton,  England,  on  the  steamship  Dunottar- 
castle.  He  sailed  for  New  York  from  Southampton 
a  few  days  later. 

Shortly  after  Scull's  return  from  South  Africa 
he  was  invited  by  Governor  Roosevelt  to  dine  with 
his  family  at  the  Executive  Mansion  in  Albany.  He 
wrote  his  mother  about  this,  how  much  he  enjoyed 
the  evening,  what  a  delightful  family  the  Roosevelts 
were,  what  a  charming  woman  Mrs.  Roosevelt  was, 
and  concludes,  evidently  for  the  relief  of  his  mother's 
feeling:    "Yes,  I  wore  my  evening  clothes." 


Chapter  VI 

NEWSPAPER  AND   MAGAZINE  WORK 

1899-1910 

From  about  1895  through  and  until  1910  Scull 
wrote  fairly  continuously  at  about  very  nearly  every- 
thin,!":'  a  man  could.  He  began  to  write  in  Harvard, 
first  for  the  Advocate,  then  for  other  college  publica- 
tions and  during  vacations  for  such  newspapers  as 
he  could  connect  with.  From  this  start  he  set  out 
to  get  something  accepted  by  the  magazines  and  when 
Mr.  Page  accepted  "A  Man  and  the  Sea"  Scull  was 
so  elated  that  he  worked  early  and  late  at  his  writ- 
ing. There  were  interruptions  like  the  breaking  of 
the  Spanish- American  War  and  later  his  trips  afar, 
but  whether  on  the  go  or  in  Boston  or  in  New  York 
Scull  kept  up  his  work.  He  did  reporting,  editor- 
ials, short  stories  and  even  attempted  a  play  and 
started  several  books.  This  work  covered  such  a  long 
period  and  played  such  an  important  part  in  his  life 
that  it  is  thought  best  to  give  it  a  chapter  by  itself. 

Professor  Copeland  of  Harvard  is  the  man  who 
is  credited  with  awakening  the  Skipper's  interest  in 
literature  and  he  probably  knew  at  that  time  what 
was  most  in  Scull's  mind  as  to  what  he  wanted  to  do. 
He  took  a  special  interest  in  Scull's  work,  advised 
him;    corrected  and  criticised  his  work  and  it  was 

60 


MAGAZINE  WORK  61 

probably  on  account  of  the  encouragement  received 
from  him  that  Scull  made  the  progress  he  did. 

Walter  Page,  afterward  Ambassador  to  the  Court 
of  St.  James,  then  editor  of  the  Atlantic,  had  ac- 
cepted Scull's  first  manuscript. 

In  June,  1899,  Scull's  father,  after  a  protracted 
illness,  died  in  Venice,  where  he  was  sojourning  with 
Mrs.  Scull  for  an  interval  of  rest  during  their  travels 
through  Europe.  Guy  immediately  went  to  Europe, 
returning  the  end  of  July.  The  family  home  on  Com- 
monwealth Avenue  in  Boston  was  closed  when  he 
returned  and,  deciding  himself  that  it  was  up  to  him 
to  earn  his  own  living,  Guy  went  to  New  York  to 
live  with  a  classmate,  who  had  rooms  at  that  time  in 
a  fashionable  boarding-house  in  Madison  Avenue, 
and  began  work  on  a  newspaper  in  that  city.  The 
establishment,  where  they  were,  boasted  of  an  En- 
glish valet  and  the  first  night  the  Skipper  was  there 
the  valet  took  the  clothes  the  two  men  had  worn  that 
day  for  cleaning  and  pressing.  His  roommate  was 
fortunate  in  having  two  suits  and  was  not  incon- 
venienced in  the  morning  when  he  dressed  to  go  to 
his  office.  Scull  as  usual  was  careless  and  indiffer- 
ent as  to  dress  and  had  only  one  suit.  In  consequence 
he  had  to  stay  in  bed  the  next  day  until  the  valet 
brought  back  his  clothes  and  he  then  and  there  de- 
clared that  he  and  a  valet  couldn't  live  under  the 
same  roof  and  took  himself  off  to  get  another  lodging 
house  where  he  declared  he  could  put  his  own  clothes 
on  without  asking  "some  flunkey's  permission." 


62  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Before  leaving  Boston  he  had  secured  an  intro- 
duction to  Lincoln  Steffens,  then  City  Editor  of  the 
New  York  Globe  and  Commercial  Advertiser,  and 
upon  presenting  it  was  given  employment  as  a  re- 
porter for  this  afternoon  paper.  Steffens,  following 
Professor  Copeland,  became  Scull's  literary  confes- 
sor, and  he  soon  knew  the  Skipper's  ambitions  better 
than  any  one  else.  Scull  went  to  Steffens  with  his 
literary  tangles,  Steffens  humored  him,  eased  him 
over  many  a  hard  place,  scolded  him  and  bullied  him 
when  necessary.  Steffens,  undoubtedly,  developed 
Scull's  writing  while  he  had  the  Skipper  under  him. 
Scull  would  even  take  a  ragging  from  him. 

Steffens,  at  the  time  this  story  of  Scull's  life  was 
compiled,  had  left  newspaper  work  and  was  traveling, 
writing  and  lecturing.  He  was  on  one  of  his  long 
jaunts  in  Russia  at  the  time  of  Scull's  death,  and 
came  back  to  the  States  early  in  the  following  year 
and  immediately  started  for  the  coast  on  a  lecture 
tour.  From  there  he  went  into  Mexico  to  collect  data 
on  Mexican  history  and  from  there  started  East  to 
catch  a  ship  sailing  for  Europe  and  the  Russian  peo- 
ple to  whom  he  is  devoting  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Steffens  had  with  Scull  on  the  Commercial  Carl 
Hovey,  now  of  the  Metropolitan  Magazine;  Abra- 
ham Cahan,  a  graduate  of  a  Russian  University  and  a 
refugee,  now  the  editor  of  that  vastly  successful  daily 
paper,  "Forward;"  Hutchins  Hapgood,  who  was 
afterwards  to  be  an  interpreter  of  radical  move- 
ments ;  Robert  Dunn,  who  was  to  do  much  fine  writ- 


MAGAZINE  WORK  63 

ing  and  to  see  the  War  on  five  fronts  and  write  about 
it,  beside  Humphrey  Nichols,  Larkin  Mead  and  a 
lot  of  others,  who  came  and  went;  and  each  one  of 
these  men  was  a  strange  object  in  a  newspaper  office 
where  persons  and  work  tend  to  get  reduced  to  a 
routine  level.  Steffens,  always  an  extraordinary 
man,  possesses  a  romantic  belief  in  the  superiority 
of  creative  expression  to  mere  business  or  material 
effort.  So  it  was  an  odd  and  wonderful  thing  that 
Scull  could  come  from  the  academic  atmosphere  of 
Harvard  to  a  newspaper  job  in  which  many  of  the 
esthetic  ideas  of  Cambridge  were  in  the  air  he 
breathed.  I  doubt  if  he  ever  again  found  any  atmos- 
phere more  congenial,  although  he  was  a  many-sided 
man  and  found  himself  at  home  in  many  places. 

Steffens  wrote  this: 

"Somebody  at  Harvard  sent  Scull  to  me:  he  said 
they  told  him  I  would  take  a  mere  writer.  And  I 
would.  I  wanted  men  who  could  write,  so  I  passed 
the  word  that  I  would  take  no  reporter  on  my  city 
staff,  no  man  who  wanted  to  be  a  newspaper  man ;  I 
wanted  only  fellows  who  cared  to  write — plays, 
poems,  essays,  tales.    And  Scull  was  this  sort. 

"He  looked  this  sort;  a  careless  dresser,  a  loose- 
moving,  absent-minded  beggar,  his  interest  was  in 
'mere'  writing,  'mere'  art.  Really  he  was  an  artist. 
He  had  to  be  told,  when  we  gave  him  an  assignment, 
where  to  go,  how  to  get  there,  what  car  to  take, 
where  to  get  off.  And,  halfway  there,  he  would 
telephone  for  a  repetition  of  his  instructions.    Some- 


64  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

times  he  disappeared,  never  came  back,  till  the  next 
day. 

"Once  when  he  went  to  'cover'  the  measuring  of 
a  yacht  for  an  international  yacht  race,  he  was  so  lost 
that  I  had  to  send  out  another  reporter  to  get  the 
measurements  and  then  find  Scull.  When  the  second 
reporter  came  back,  he  had  Scull  in  tow,  and  pointmg 
to  our  humble  sheepish  friend,  he  explained: 

"  'Found  him  on  a  wood-pile,  back  of  the  dock, 
writing  a  poem,  swinging  his  legs  over  the  end  of  the 
dock  and  when  I  asked  him  what  he  was  doing  he 
said  he  was  "just  thinking  a  few  thoughts."  ' 

"No  matter,  when  Scull  could  happen  at  a  place 
where  there  was  something  to  see — with  his  eyes — he 
could  write  it  so  that  the  reader  could  see  it.  No  one 
ever  read  Scull's  stuff;  all  he  had  to  do  was  to  look 
at  the  page ;  and  he'd  see  it,  see  it  as  a  scene.  Scull 
was  great. 

"We  had  him  do  scenes,  here  at  first,  then  finally 
the  Boer  War.  You  know.  The  English  papers 
stole  his  stuff  till  they  could  buy  it.  It  was  right  to 
steal  Scull's  stuff.  Art  is  for  the  love  of  it;  and  it 
is  no  crime  to  steal  a  picture  or  a  good  paragraph. 

"Scull  was  a  success  with  me.  He  served  us  as 
we  wished  to  be  served.  But  we  served  him,  too.  We 
made  him  write. 

"  'Hurry  up,  Scull,'  I'd  say,  knowing  what  I  was 
doing.  'Paper's  going  to  press.  That's  a  "must." 
Force  it.' 


MAGAZINE  WORK  65 

"He  would  look  up  at  me,  in  agony,  pleading  for 
mercy. 

"  'Jam  it,'  I'd  order,  'Hard.' 

"And  he'd  do  it,  and  go  off,  sick.  It  wasn't  right; 
not  finished,  not  perfected;  that  news  paragraph, 
and  I  guess  he  hated  me  sometimes.  But  I  did  make 
Scull  write. 

"That's  what  he  needed.  Poor  slave  of  art  that  he 
was,  he  couldn't  do  it  alone.  Scull's  tragedy  was 
that,  loving  English,  he  knew  what  it  ought  to  be. 
Some  Devil  had  told  him  how  to  write,  how  not  to 
write.  He  was  a  conscious  artist.  So  he  could  never 
let  it  go  at  that.  He  could  never  leave  it.  There 
was  always  something  more  to  do.  How  he  did  try. 
That  man  worked.  And  what  'we'  forced  out  of  him 
shows  that,  if  he  had  had  an  editor  all  his  life,  an 
editor  that  understood  and  cruelly  treated  him  with 
love — Guy  Scull  would  have  done  us  some  perfect 
English  about  our  beautifully  imperfect  life. 

"Good-bye.  I  have  told  what  Scull  wouldn't  do. 
You  have  forced  me  as  I  forced  him.  Take  it  as  I 
did — for  what  it's  worth.  And  again,  good-bye. 
You  are  paying  a  tribute  to  a  beautiful  man." 

Occasionally  Scull  was  allowed  to  try  his  hand  at 
theatrical  criticism.     He  wrote  his  Mother: 

"Tomorrow  night  I  shall  probably  be  sent  to  see 
a  show.  But  only  probably,  as  my  last  critcism  was 
cut  down  to  three  lines  and  even  then  they  were  none 
of  mine.    Yesterday  I  bought  a  violin.     Tonight  I 


66  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

am  to  call  upon  the  Holts.  I  can  hear  Dad  saying, 
'I  hope  he  puts  himself  in  evening  clothes.'  " 

There  were  very  few  of  even  Scull's  most  intimate 
friends  who  knew  of  the  depth  of  the  Skipper's  liter- 
ary ambitions  and  the  genuine  foundation  for  them. 

"The  only  ones  I  know  of,"  writes  a  fellow  worker 
on  the  Globe,  "are  Professor  Copeland  and  Steffens. 
Scull  was  very  shy  about  this  and  as  he  grew  older 
grew  touchy  about  the  subject.  All  of  us  come  in  con- 
tact with  people  who  think  they  can  write  but  don't. 
His  case  was  an  entirely  different  matter,  because  he 
had  the  goods.  The  fact  he  could  not  do  the  thing 
in  demand  at  the  moment  proved  nothing.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  never  achieved  a  real  reputation 
as  a  writer  I  was  convinced  in  college  and  am  equally 
sure  now  that  he  possessed  a  literary  gift  as  rare  as  it 
was  troublesome  to  the  owner.  He  could  not  write 
ordinary  things.  Only  the  deepest  and  most  elemen- 
tal passage  in  life  made  any  appeal  to  his  genius. 

"  'A  Man  and  the  Sea'  was  a  cameo — a  sketch  if 
you  like,  of  a  perfect  and  deep-toned  sort.  Yet  there 
was  a  note  of  tragedy  in  the  production  of  a  genre 
so  really  useless  in  literature.  Scull  could  have  gone 
on  producing  such  things  aii  his  life,  but  as  the  effect 
he  wanted  to  produce,  and  did  produce,  could  only 
appeal  to  expert  judges  of  literature,  and  not  in  any 
way  to  the  general  public,  it  became  a  piece  of  self- 
expression,  a  futile  kind  of  work.  As  a  painter  Scull 
could  have  expressed  his  feelings  of  the  elemental 
tragedy  of  man,  or  man's  loneliness,  his  friendliness, 


MAGAZINE  WORK  67 

his  generosity  towards  his  fellows,  his  sentimental 
kindness  to  woman,  and  a  lot  of  other  deep-seated 
and  tremendous  attributes.  He  could  have  done  it 
as  a  poet.  But  it  could  not  be  done  in  prose  unless 
you  were  a  novelist  or  short  story  writer.  He  was 
neither  of  these. 

"I  have  dwelt  upon  this  beautiful  little  sea  piece, 
*A  Man  and  the  Sea,'  simply  because  it  is  so  signifi- 
cant of  the  whole  future  of  that  side  of  Scull  which  I 
knew  best. 

"Precisely  the  same  extraordinary  qualities  were 
found  in  the  descriptive  articles  he  wrote  for  the  New 
York  Commercial  Advertiser  about  the  Boer  War. 
Anyone  who  read  these  stories  of  the  fighting  in  South 
Africa,  pictures  of  camp  fire,  battle  and  march,  and 
do  not  feel  that  the  writer  possessed  a  genius  for  the 
poignant,  the  sad,  the  picturesque,  just  as,  say 
Chopin  possessed  it,  or  Whistler  possessed  it,  is  sim- 
ply without  imagination  in  this  regard. 

"Appreciation  of  his  work.  Scull  met  with  from 
many  persons  and  on  many  occasions.  Copeland  was 
probably  the  first  to  see  what  was  in  him  in  a  literary 
way.  Walter  Page  immediately  recognized  the  ex- 
traordinary quality  of  the  short  things  which  he  saw. 
Steffens  realized  that  Scull  was  doing  beautiful  things 
for  the  paper  and  gave  him  all  the  encouragement 
possible. 

"It  was  the  narrowness  of  his  gift,  the  fact  that  it 
did  not  regularly  fit  into  any  of  the  ordinary  journal- 
istic or  prose  forms,  which  defeated  him.    Even  Avai' 


68  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

correspondence  has  to  be  at  times  prosaic,  matter- 
of-fact,  and  commonplace.  Scull  could  not  be  com- 
monplace; he  could  not  be  prosaic.  Facts  bothered 
him  to  such  an  extent  that  the  effect  was  humorous, 
and  the  result  was  that  in  the  newspaper  office  his 
work  covered  two  extremes — at  one  moment  he  was 
the  brilliant  war  correspondent  from  South  Africa, 
but  the  next,  as  soon  as  the  war  was  over,  he  was 
doing  the  poorest  drudgery  of  the  office  such  as  writ- 
ing the  daily  weather  story.  How  Steffens  used  to 
smile  at  Scull  in  his  shirt  with  his  sleeves  rolled  up 
over  his  muscular  arms  attempting  to  forge,  like  a 
blacksmith,  a  light  readable  weather  story. 

"For  besides  being  a  personality  Scull  was  also  a 
figure.  To  some  men  he  always  appeared  a  wild, 
somewhat  ragged,  Don  Quixote  ready  at  any  time  to 
give  you  the  price  of  a  drink,  or  start  on  an  expedi- 
tion to  rescue  a  former  Sunday  School  teacher  in 
Chinatown  or  shove  off  for  South  America  for  hidden 
gold.  Scull  mocked  his  serious  side,  he  never  talked 
about  his  writing  to  anybody,  and  he  liked  to  feel 
that  he  was  always  ready  for  a  desperate  adventure — 
which  he  really  was. 

"All  sorts  of  foolish  things  stand  out  in  my  recol- 
lection of  him.  One  afternoon  Larkin  Mead,  a  re- 
porter on  the  same  newspaper  with  Scull  and  my- 
self, and  I  were  waiting  in  the  Criminal  Courts 
Building  for  something  to  happen.  It  was  an  in- 
credibly gray  and  gloomy  November  day  and  we 
were  both  sick  of  the  over-heated,  crowded  corri- 


MAGAZINE  WORK  69 

dors  smelling  of  antiseptic,  and  the  overshadowing 
Tombs.  It  occurred  to  us  that  it  would  be  very  pleas- 
ant to  spend  the  afternoon  in  the  cafe  across  the 
street,  drinking,  but  none  of  us  had  any  money.  We 
thought  of  Scull,  who  had  just  come  back  from  some- 
where in  the  Tropics,  and  using  one  of  the  news- 
paper messenger  boys  we  sent  a  note  to  him  at  the 
office  to  come  at  once  as  we  were  in  great  need.  Then 
we  went  over  to  the  cafe,  settled  down  at  a  table  in 
the  balcony,  ordered  everything  we  wanted,  and 
waited  for  him  to  find  us.  Of  course  he  came,  wear- 
ing no  overcoat  and  a  straw  hat  which  he  had  pur- 
chased in  Colon,  of  the  brand  'El  Popular.'  Why 
should  I  remember  that  hat?  As  soon  as  he  had 
learned  of  the  great  emergency  he  dug  down  deep  in 
his  trousers  pockets  and  drew  out  numerous  pieces  of 
cnimpled-up  green  paper,  and  everything  was  pleas- 
ant for  hours  to  come. 

"Guy  Scull  was  a  poet  and  a  Don  Quixote,  and  he 
would  have  made  a  great  pirate  if  he  had  not  had 
a  tender  heart. 

"My  recollections  of  Scull  are  an  absurd  mixture 
of  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous.  As  he  had  friends 
of  all  sorts  and  conditions  you  will  undoubtedly  re- 
ceive pictures  of  him  which  make  him  appear  at  one 
time  like  a  Richard  Harding  Davis,  at  another  like 
an  indomitable  sleuth  or  government  agent,  and  at 
another  like  one  of  the  conservative  pillars  of  society. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  he  was  all  of  these  things.  To 
me,  however,  he  was  a  man  whose  genius  never  found 


70  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

sufficient    expression — essentially     and     really     an 

artist." 

"I  went  to  the  Slargent  exhibition  the  other  day," 
writes  Scull  in  one  of  his  letters  to  his  Mother,  "and 
was  much  impressed  by  the  pictures.  It  is  an  absolute 
disgrace  that  an  exhibition  of  portraits  of  so  famous 
an  artist  as  Sargent  should  be  used  as  a  place  of 
meeting  for  ye  good  people  of  Boston  town  to  sip 
their  afternoon  tea.    There  is  an  appreciation  of  art 

for  you." 

The  men  whom  he  met  in  New  York  and  those 
whom  he  came  in  contact  with  through  his  work  on 
this  newspaper  made  a  great  impression  on  Scull  and 
helped  to  fix  more  firmly  than  ever  his  desire  to  write 
real  things.  He  made  a  great  many  friends.  It  was 
while  he  was  still  in  this  reporting  work,  but  at  the 
time  doing  special  work  for  the  A  P  that  I  met  him. 
Firm  and  lasting  friendships  are  sometimes  founded 
on  little  and  very  unimportant  episodes.  Such  was 
mine  with  him. 

It  was  during  one  of  the  series  of  yacht  races  for 
the  America's  Cup.  This  one  was  off  Sandy  Hook, 
a  long  beat  to  windward  down  the  Jersey  Coast  and 
back  again.  With  a  number  of  other  reporters  for 
afternoon  newspapers  I  was  stationed  at  the  West- 
ern Union  and  Postal  towers  on  Navesink  Highlands 
where  with  powerful  glasses  the  racing  yachts  were 
followed  over  the  course  and  their  progress  reported 
by  wire  direct  into  the  offices  of  the  various  City 
Editors. 


MAGAZINE  WORK  71 

On  this  particular  day,  however,  visibility  was 
poor.  From  the  Navesink  Highlands  the  most  pow- 
erful pair  of  binoculars  could  not  even  raise  the 
lightship  far  inside  the  starting  line.  In  the  emer- 
gency I  conceived  the  idea  of  riding  a  passing  train 
down  to  Asbury  Park,  off  which  the  turning  mark 
was  anchored,  trying  for  the  time  there,  flashing  it 
back  into  my  office  and  possibly  scoring  a  beat.  I 
reached  my  objective  early,  located  the  telegraph 
office  and  ran  a  mile  down  to  the  beach  to  pick  out 
an  observation  post.  The  only  things  available  in 
this  line  were  the  Summer  hotels  all  closed,  the  season 
being  over.  However,  I  chose  the  tallest  of  these, 
watched  my  chance,  stole  up  the  back  stairs,  broke  out 
of  a  balcony  window  and  laboriously  climbed  the 
steep  roof  to  the  ridge  pole.  As  I  came  over  the  top 
I  saw,  much  to  my  dismay,  a  long-legged  man  astride 
the  highest  peak,  with  binoculars  glued  to  his  eyes 
and  talking  to  a  telegraph  operator  who  had  some- 
how fastened  his  instrument  to  the  shingles,  and 
while  hanging  on  with  one  hand,  was  working  his  key 
with  the  other.  Neither  man  paid  the  slightest  at- 
tention to  me. 

"Hey,"  I  finally  shouted.  "Got  any  objection  to 
my  being  up  here?" 

"Help  yourself,"  returned  the  long-legged  one. 

Then  issued  a  conversation  something  like  this. 

"Boats  in  sight?" 

"Yep." 

"Shamrock  leading?" 


72  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"Nope." 

"Anywhere  near  the  mark?" 
"Nope." 

I  unslung  my  glasses  and  tried  to  hore  through 
the  thickness  off  shore  to  pick  up  the  racers. 
"  'Bout  where  are  they?" 
"East  by  Nor'east." 
"Where's  the  mark?" 
"Dead  East." 
"Bad  day  for  it." 
"Yep." 

"Sending  much?" 
"Yep." 

That  ended  the  attempt  at  conversation  and  I 
confined  my  efforts  to  following  the  boats  towards 
the  mark.  Finally  they  reached  and  turned  it.  In 
the  meantime  the  operator  had  been  ticking  off  the 
story  of  the  race  as  it  was  dictated  by  the  long-legged 
one  with  the  binoculars.  I  got  the  time  and  was 
wondering  how  I  could  get  down  without  falling  off 
the  roof  when  the  long-legged  one  turned  and  said: 

"Got  a  wire?" 

"Yes,  a  mile  away." 

"Ten  minutes  help  you?" 

"You  bet." 

"Good.     I'll  hold  my  flash  ten  minutes." 

I  slid  the  roof,  ripped  the  seat  of  my  trousers  and 
broke  all  records,  one  hand  free,  for  the  mile  flat. 
At  that,  the  long-legged  one  from  the  roof  beat  me 


MAGAZINE  WORK  73 

into  his  office  with  the  flash.  Reporting  yacht  races 
is  not  regarded  as  serious  work  and  ten  minutes  is 
not  much  of  a  start,  but  it  was  serious  business  to  us 
and  meant  much  in  those  days  with  an  edition  wait- 
ing and  all  the  chances  between  that  ridge  pole  thirty- 
odd  miles  down  the  Jersey  coast  and  Park  Row. 

"I  didn't  know  about  that  nail  in  the  roof,"  said 
the  Skipper  to  me  a  few  days  later.  "If  it  hadn't 
been  for  that  nail  I  had  it  figured  we'd  broke  about 
even." 

Such  is  a  good  illustration  of  Scull's  enterprise, 
his  kindly  heart  and  his  strong  sense  of  fair-play. 

While  quartered  at  Asbury  Park  that  autumn 
Scull  wrote  his  Mother  that  this  town  was  about  the 
dullest  place  on  the  face  of  the  globe  but  that  the  sea 
air  was  good. 

"This  is  Simday  night,"  he  adds,  "and  the  people 
in  the  hotel  here  are  singing  hynms  and  may  the 
Lord  have  mercy  on  their  souls  when  they  die." 

Another  newspaper  man  writes: 

"Guy  Scull  and  the  hours  we  spent  together  stand 
out  in  high  relief  in  my  memory.  On  this  newspaper 
a  number  of  the  staff  were  banded  together  by  a  com- 
munity of  interest  and  we  two  were  among  them. 

"I  remember  him  as  a  man  of  few  words  and  pas- 
sionate silences.  Literature,  poetry,  and  art  in  gen- 
eral, seemed  to  be  his  religion.  I  can  just  see  him 
pulling  away  at  his  pipe,  while  listening  to  some  de- 
bate on  Turgeniev  or  Meredith  with  eyes  flashing 
sparks  of  his  inner  fire.     From  the  few  words  he 


74  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

would  drop,  one  could  see  the  full  sincerity  and  depth 
of  his  interest  in  matters  of  this  kind. 

"As  for  his  own  work  on  the  paper,  outside  of  rou- 
tine reportorial  matter,  his  specialty  was  humor — 
funny,  snappy  causeries,  staccato  sentences,  crisp  and 
alive  with  a  sense  of  the  drollness  of  human  existence, 
which  piqued  my  curiosity  and  interest  inordinately. 
I  remember  cracking  a  cheap  joke:  'He  is  a  peculiar 
Guy,  with  something  back  of  his  Scull.'  There  he 
sits  at  his  section  of  the  long,  dill  table,  which  was 
occupied  by  the  reporters,  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  pipe  in 
mouth,  his  eyes  crinkling  up  in  an  intense  study  of 
the  air  before  hun.  Then,  with  a  sudden  swoop,  he 
would  fall  to  writing  and  smoking  with  amusing  ve- 
hemence. He  made  me  feel  that  I  had  an  ardent 
friend  in  him,  while  he  inspired  me  with  enthusiasm 
for  himself.  The  more  I  knew  him,  the  less  I  seemed 
to  know  him.  And  yet  I  felt  as  though  the  less  I 
knew  him  the  more  I  seemed  to  understand  him. 

"I  never  saw  him  after  he  left  the  paper.  His 
image  is  one  of  the  striking  portraits  in  the  album 
of  my  memory." 

And  yet  another,  who  was  assistant  City  Editor 
of  this  same  newspaper  when  the  Skipper  was  a  re- 
porter, says  of  him: 

"He  was  a  lovable  character,  modest,  diffident  and 
so  very  retiring.  I  write  this  on  copy  paper — what 
better  epitaph  for  the  Skipper — however,  what  I  have 
to  say  poorly  conveys  the  picture  of  him  as  I  laiew 
him! 


MAGAZINE    WORK  75 

"When  Scull  made  his  appearance  on  the  city  staff 
of  the  'Commercial  Advertiser'  we  felt  sorry  for  the 
loose- jointed,  uncouth  individual  who  had  dared  enter 
a  field  where  mental  activity  and  good  leg  work  were 
essentials.  It  was  not  very  long,  however,  before 
we  all  had  to  change  our  minds  about  Scull.  We 
quickly  appreciated  the  fact  that  behind  his  mask  of 
modesty  there  lurked  a  keen  mind,  ready  wit  and 
literary  ability  of  no  mean  order.  His  funereal  face 
would  light  up  frequently  in  telling  a  story  and  it 
was  a  delight  to  listen  to  him. 

"The  Skipper,  however,  was  prone  to  take  things 
literally  and  this  habit  one  time  led  him  into  a  bad 
fix.  A  morning  paper  had  an  interview  with  Senator 
Foraker,  of  Ohio,  on  some  of  the  then  important  busi- 
ness of  the  hour.  The  interview  had  been  obtained  in 
Washington,  but  that  morning  in  looking  over  the 
'Hotel  Arrivals'  I  found  that  the  Senator  had  come 
to  this  city.  I  called  Steifens'  attention  to  the  inter- 
view and  suggested  that  we  send  some  one  up  to  see 
the  Senator  and  we  might  get  an  amplification  of  the 
subject. 

"  'All  right,'  he  replied,  'send  Scull.' 
"So  I  called  the  Skipper  and  giving  him  the  news- 
paper clipping  containing  the  interview  I  said:  'The 
boss  wants  you  to  go  and  see  Fire- Alarm  Foraker 
and  ask  him  for  further  facts.'  I  elaborated  some- 
what on  the  matter,  to  all  of  which  Scull  listened 
carefully,  but  in  a  somewhat  puzzled  way.  Subse- 
quent events  showed  that  he  had  not  the  faintest  idea 


«1 


76  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

what  I  was  talking  about.  However,  like  a  good 
reporter,  he  started  off.  About  an  hour  later  he 
returned. 

"'Well,'  I  asked,  'did  you  see  the  Senator?' 

"  'Yes,'  he  replied,  with  that  delicious  drawl  he 
had,  'but  what  did  you  call  him?' 

**  'Foraker.'  I  answered. 
'No,'  he  insisted,  'you  used  another  name.' 

'For  a  moment  I  was  stumped.    Then  it  dawned 
upon  me. 

"  'I  called  him  Fire- Alarm  Foraker.  That  is  a 
nickname  which  has  been  applied  to  him  in  Ohio  and 
in  Washington.' 

"  'That's  it,'  cried  Scull  in  a  relieved  way,  'I  called 
him  Mr.  Fire- Alarm  and  they  threw  me  out.' 

"Scull  never  liked  to  be  tied  down  to  the  routine 
of  a  newspaper  office.  He  was  fortunate  in  having  a 
man  like  Steffens  as  his  City  Editor.  He  wrote  his 
copy  with  stumps  of  pencils,  used  any  old  kind  of 
paper  and  in  fact  was  the  most  disorderly  member 
of  the  staff  in  that  respect.  He  stood  alongside  of 
my  desk  one  morning  and  after  contemplating  the 
several  piles  of  clippings  intended  for  different  mem- 
bers of  the  staff,  the  entries  in  the  assignment  book 
which  I  had  to  make  for  Steffens  and  the  pile  of  'City 
Copy'  arranged  in  the  order  of  importance,  he  sighed 
and  in  most  lugubrious  tones  said:  'Gee,  you're  a 
wonder.'  He  never  explained  the  remark.  Perhaps 
it  was  sarcasm. 

"Wlien  the  Boer  War  broke  out  Scull  vanished. 


MAGAZINE    WORK  77 

The  next  thing  we  knew  about  his  whereabouts  was 
the  receipt  from  him  of  letters  from  South  Africa 
describing  events  there.  One  letter  I  remember  well. 
Steff  ens  read  it  through  and  then  giving  it  to  me  said, 
'Put  a  good  head  on  this.'  The  top  line  I  chose  was 
'How  they  fought  at  Colenso.'  That  letter  should 
be  looked  up  in  the  files  of  the  Commercial  Adver- 
tiser and  reprinted. 

"While  in  a  news  sense  the  letters  were  discounted 
by  the  cables,  yet  they  had  a  wonderful  literary  merit. 
There  was  no  attempt  at  describing  military  manoeu- 
vres, but  his  were  stories  of  men  and  battles  that  had 
attracted  world-wide  attention,  told  in  a  wonderful 
way.  In  reading  them  I  forgot  I  was  in  a  building 
on  Park  Row  and  was  transported  for  the  time  being 
to  the  scene  of  action.  They  were  wonderful  tales 
of  wonderful  fights,  stirringly  told." 

"Skipper  Scull  was  by  all  odds  the  most  simple, 
lovable  and  entertaining  man  I  ever  knew,"  writes 
another  man  speaking  of  this  same  time.  "In  be- 
tween the  times  he  roamed  the  earth  covering  the 
Boer  War,  the  Balkan  flare-ups  and  other  trifling 
assignments  in  his  scheme  of  things,  I  shared  with 
him  most  of  the  special  story  assignments  on  the 
old  'Commercial  Advertiser.'  These  ranged  from 
trailing  Bill  Devery  about  his  night  post  at  the 
'pump,'  to  French  balls,  gunmen  outings  and  police 
raids.  If  he  had  to  cover  the  story  I  usually  went 
with  him,  and  he  came  along  when  I  had  to  write  it. 
We  started  at  the  Harvard  or  Yale  Club  and  wound 


78  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

up  at  the  Skipper's  room,  where  he  invariably 
stripped  to  the  waist  and  sawed  away  on  the  'cello 
for  hours.  We  lost  a  lot  of  sleep,  but  we  gained  a 
good  deal  of  experience  in  the  other  side  of  life,  that 
the  Skipper  never  tired  of  looking  over.  He  loved 
all  sorts  of  people,  as  I  imagine  Dickens  must  have 
done,  and  nothing  human  in  any  end  of  town  ever 
seemed  to  surprise,  ruffle  or  bore  him." 

From  the  time  he  began  contributing  to  college 
publications  in  Harvard  Scull  wrote  continuously 
either  as  a  reporter,  contributor  or  war  correspon- 
dent for  about  ten  years.  He  covered  the  Boer  War 
in  South  Africa,  the  Venezuela  complication,  the 
flare-ups  in  the  Balkans,  the  opening  of  the  Duma 
in  Russia,  explorations  in  Newfoundland,  the  Russo- 
Japanese  War  and  the  Buffalo  Jones  expedition  to 
Nairobi,  British  East  Africa.  Some  of  his  news- 
paper correspondence  from  South  Africa  during  the 
Boer  War  is  still  used  today  as  an  example  of  pure 
English  and  strong  descriptive  writings  in  the  En- 
glish classes  at  Harvard  University  and  Radcliff  Col- 
lege.   Lack  of  space  prevents  using  any  of  his  work 

in  this  book  and  it  has  been  thought  best  to  print 
his  writings  in  a  separate  volume  at  a  later  date. 

Scull  stopped  writing  suddenly.  As  has  been  said 
he  was  shy  and  sensitive  about  this  great  desire  of 
his.  He  was  either  way  up  in  the  clouds  over  some 
success  or  down  deep  in  the  dumps  over  a  failure. 
What  he  needed  was  a  literary  mentor  like  Copeland 
at  Harvard  or  Steffens  in  New  York,  but  Scull  was 


MAGAZINE    WORK  79 

too  restless  and  too  much  on  the  move  to  pin  himself 
to  any  one  person.  There  were  only  a  few  he  would 
even  talk  to  about  his  work  and  criticism  by  others  he 
would  not  accept.  Eventually  it  was  the  action  of 
one  publisher  in  canceling  a  contract  that  prompted 
him  to  cut  loose  so  abruptly  from  the  writing  game. 
This  contract  was  made  by  Steffens,  his  friend,  while 
Scull  was  out  of  the  country  and  when  informed  of 
the  news  upon  his  return  after  a  long  absence  he  was 
so  elated  and  so  sure  that  his  future  was  made  that 
when  the  publishers  asked  him  to  let  them  out  of  the 
contract  on  pure  monetary  reasons  Scull  was  so  dis- 
gusted that  he  would  not  even  hold  them  to  their 
agreement.  To  his  way  of  thinking  these  men  de- 
liberately broke  their  word  and  he  contemptuously 
declined  to  talk  with  them.  He  went  into  a  sulk  and 
none  of  his  friends,  even  those  closest  to  him,  could 
budge  him  in  his  determination  to  abandon  forever 
this  field  of  work  where  a  pledge  and  a  contract  meant 
so  little. 

There  was,  however,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  a 
renewed  interest  in  writing.  His  wife  had  succeeded 
where  others  had  failed  in  arousing  it.  They  even 
planned  how  they  would  resume  the  work  together 
and  if  death  had  not  come  so  suddenly  when  it  did 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  the  Skipper  would 
have  in  another  year  been  writing  again  and  from 
his  great  field  of  adventure  and  travel  would  have 
produced  some  remarkable  work. 


Chapter  Yll 

^t:xezuela— 1901 

Whex  troubles  between  the  o\\Tiers  of  asphalt  con- 
cessions in  Venezuela  made  it  look  like  interference 
by  foreign  powers  or  actual  intervention  by  the 
U.  S.  A.  Caprino  Castro,  dictator  and  self-made 
President  of  Venezuela,  held  the  headlines  of  every 
American  daily  of  any  size  for  a  good  part  of  a  year. 
Collier's  Weekly  had  Richard  Harding  Davis,  the 
war  correspondent,  engaged  to  cover  the  story,  and 
James  H.  Hare,  the  photographer,  to  accompany 
him.  But  at  the  last  minute  something  happened 
to  keep  Davis  at  home  and  Collier's  signed  up  Scull. 
One  of  the  editors  of  Collier's,  who  was  rooming  with 
Scull  then  as  he  had  been  some  years  before,  says: 

"This  was  where  I  got  even  with  'Skip.'  The  night 
before  he  left  for  South  Africa  I  had  casually  asked 
him  where  he  was  going  and  he  said  'South  Africa' 
as  nonchalantly  as  though  he  were  headed  for 
'Jack's.'  This  night  when  he  came  home  about  1 
A.  M.  as  usual  and  got  out  the  old  'cello  to  play  him- 
self to  sleep,  I  asked  him  where  he  was  going  in  the 
momino'  and  he  va^^Tied:  'Oh,  I  don't  know.'  and 
I  replied  'I  do,'  and  he  a.sked  'Where?'  and  I  said 
'Venezuela.'  That  was  the  only  time  I  ever  had  the 
Skipper  guessing." 

80 


VENEZUELA  81 

So  to  Venezuela  went  Scull  on  less  than  twelve 
hours'  notice.  Hare,  who  was  his  companion  on  tliis 
trip,  tells  the  story  of  their  voyage  and  arrival. 

"We  were  the  only  two  passengers  in  the  first  cabin 
of  the  Red  D.  Line  Steamer,"  he  writes,  "and  I  re- 
member the  Port  Captain  bidding  us  good-bye  and 
saying  'You  two  fellows  have  a  private  yacht  to 
yourselves.'  We  boarded  it  in  a  blinding  snow  storm 
and  on  the  way  to  the  dock  cashed  our  draft  for  ex- 
penses at  the  bank,  deciding  to  take  the  money  in  gold 
in  five,  ten  and  twenty  dollar  pieces. 

"I  will  admit  I  was  a  little  disappointed  at  Davis 
not  going,  he  was  such  a  delightful  companion  and 
of  course  was  a  most  experienced  newsgatherer,  to 
say  nothing  of  his  usually  inmiaculate  appearance, 
while  Scull  was  practically  a  novice  and  in  those  days 
somewhat  slouchy  in  appearance — but  you  had  only 
to  be  in  his  company  a  short  time  to  find  out  that 
appearances  comited  for  little,  and  that  he  was  a  rat- 
tling good  fellow,  though  somewhat  erratic. 

"This  was  confirmed  when  he  suggested  that  we 
wouldn't  need  to  keep  a  detailed  expense  account  of 
how  we  spent  our  money,  but  just  take  a  handful 
and  when  that  was  gone — take  more!  I  always  had 
a  feeling  that  I  was  negligent  in  not  keeping  a  strictly 
itemized  account  of  my  expenses,  yet,  here  was  a  man 
who  had  me  beaten  to  a  frazzle.  I  discovered  later 
when  I  came  to  know  him  better,  that  money  meant 
nothing  to  him,  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  in- 
terest himself  in  it — but,  when  I  picked  up  a  D  ^uble 


82  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

Eaglp  on  the  flc  or  of  his  stateroom  and  discovered 
that  he  had  at  least  $300.00  in  gold  in  his  trousers' 
pockets  hanging  on  a  hook  and  the  door  open  to  any 
deck-hand  to  enter — I  put  up  a  protest  that  it  was 
not  fair  to  his  room  steward,  because  if  any  of  it  was 
stolen,  the  steward  would  probably  be  blamed — and 
then  Scull  consented  to  give  his  money  in  charge  of 
the  Purser. 

"After  a  few  days  out  of  New  York  we  ran  into 
warmer  weather  and  Guy's  peculiarities  asserted 
themselves,  this  time  in  a  new  direction.  He  decided 
he  needed  a  haircut  and  asked  me  to  act  as  the  ton- 
sorial  artist,  which  I  promptly  refused  to  do — but 
that  did  not  'phaze'  him,  he  said  'Oh  well,  I'll  cut  it 
myself  and  sure  enough  borrowed  a  pair  of  scissors 
and  hacked  away  at  it  himself  much  to  the  amusement 
of  the  officers  and  crew  of  the  ship. 

"I  felt  a  little  mean  that  I  had  not  consented  to 
officiate  when  I  saw  the  results  whioh  can  be  readily 
imagined.  But  he  was  unperturbed.  He  had  an  old 
strap  around  his  trousers,  which  were  baggy  and 
needed  pressing,  but  when  I  would  gently  remonstrate 
on  the  looks  of  them,  he  would  pull  the  buckle  up  an- 
other notch  and  say  'there,  how's  that?'  and  was 
happy  and  apparently  oblivious  of  any  shortcoming 
in  his  appearance.  In  fact,  dress  was  about  the  last 
thing  in  the  world  to  trouble  him. 

"It  was  very  hot  in  Caracas  and  I  bought  a  cheap 
white  duck  suit  for  myself  as  I  noticed  all  the  Amer- 
icans and  Europeans  there  wore  white  clothes — but 


VENEZUELA  83 

that  only  afforded  him  ground  for  humor,  and  he 
lost  no  time  in  chaffing  me  good-naturedly  that  I 
was  'a  Dude.'  I  tried  very  hard  to  induce  him  to 
get  into  white  also — but  to  no  avail,  even  when  Mr. 
Loomis,  the  American  IMinister,  invited  us  to  dine, 
'twas  the  same  old  black  suit  which  needed  pressing 
that  he  wore  with  the  same  old  strap  around  the  waist, 
and  he  was  as  perfectty  at  home  with  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Loomis  as  though  clad  in  the  latest  dinner  coat  and 
gold  buttons. 

"Dear  Old  Skipper — he  was  too  big  a  man  to  care 
about  clothes  in  any  man — himself  included! 

"Dr.  Aughinbaugh  and  wife,  Americans,  were  liv- 
ing at  the  Hotel  in  Caracas  where  we  stopped  and 
we  soon  got  on  friendly  terms  with  them.  Some  few 
days  after  we  arrived  the  doctor  said : 

"  'There  was  a  pretty  good  joke  on  you  fellows 
when  you  got  off  the  ship.  Of  course  we  rubbered 
and  enquired  who  you  were  and  were  told  that  the 
big  fellow  (Guy)  was  a  journalist,  but  that  the  little 
one  (Hare)  had  got  slathers  of  money  and  had  only 
come  down  here  to  make  pictures!  and  I  said  to  my- 
self, where  do  these  Englishmen  get  all  their  money?' 

"Needless  to  say  that  was  one  on  me.  Here  was  I, 
a  poor,  struggling  photographer  with  a  wife  and  half 
a  dozen  kiddies  to  provide  for  which  kept  my  nose  to 
the  grindstone,  and  here  was  the  Skipper  just  out  of 
Harvard,  son  of  wealthy  parents,  and  I  recognized  as 
the  rich  man  of  the  two." 

In  Collier's  during  March  and  April,  1901,  ap- 


84  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

peared  Scull's  articles  and  Hare's  photographs. 
Scull  wrote  about  the  asphalt  war,  the  international 
question,  President  Castro  and  his  cabinet,  the 
Venezuelan  people  at  work  and  play,  and  in  one  arti- 
cle he  touched  upon  the  Leper  Colony.  Scull  told 
me  that  what  he  saw  he  could  not  write  because  it 
was  too  horrible.  Yet  he  was  fascinated  by  these 
unfortunates.  There  is  in  this  article  of  Scull's  a 
touch  of  sadness  and  melancholy  which  is  conspicuous 
in  much  of  his  writings,  either  because  he  was  such 
a  master  of  this  style  or  because  he  so  easily  dropped 
into  it.  In  telling  the  story  of  one  of  his  visits  to 
the  Lepers  he  writes: 

"The  carriage  turned  around  a  sharp  corner  in  the 
road,  and  before  us  stood  a  low,  one-story  building — • 
all  alone  in  the  country  of  the  forsaken  plain — the 
building  which  had  been  reared  as  an  asylum  for  the 
lepers  of  the  land.     *     *     * 

"Then  as  we  came  to  the  building  others  of  this 
colony  collected  in  a  wondering  group  near  the  cut- 
ting in  the  wall — a  high-peaked  arch — which  stood  in 
the  place  of  a  doorway.  They  came  forth  from  the 
inside  of  the  building,  stealthily,  silently,  gathering 
from  the  far  ends  of  the  broad  brick  veranda  which 
fronted  the  hospital.  They  came  in  twos  and  threes, 
or  singly,  but  always  with  scarcely  any  noise.  Here 
came  a  man  dressed  all  in  white.  Here  came  another 
from  out  beneath  the  archway  resting  his  weight  on 
the  shoulder  of  a  young  boy,  whose  face  had  already 
become  horribly  marked  with  the  disease.    Here  came 


VENEZUELA  85 

a  man  walking  close  to  the  balustrade  of  the  veranda 
who,  with  an  outstretched,  fingerless  hand,  leaned 
with  each  step  he  took  on  the  uppermost  stones  of  the 
balustrade.  Behind  him  followed  two  women,  each 
with  an  arm  about  the  other's  waist.  The  man  who 
leaned  on  the  balustrade  stood  head  and  shoulders 
above  the  rest.  The  face  of  this  man  was  unlovely; 
and  yet,  when  he  laughed  at  something  the  interpre- 
ter said,  that  laugh  was  like  a  human  being's.  In  the 
background  stood  two  women.  One  of  these  was  well 
on  in  years — the  hair  had  receded  far  back  from  the 
forehead,  and  there  were  curls  there,  like  an  old  maid 
who  is  still  careful  of  her  appearance.  On  her  hand 
she  wore  a  ring  that  she  might  look  the  more  beauti- 
ful.   But  her  face  was  like  the  face  of  the  man. 

*'Her  companion  was  tall  and  dark-eyed  and  fair 
to  see.  Her  skin  was  clear  and  unblemished.  Her 
figure  was  neatly  cut,  and  she  seemed  to  have  taken 
care  with  her  dress — even  the  Imot  of  her  black  velvet 
belt  was  tied  to  lie  flat  and  even.  She  carried  herself 
with  the  proud  bearing  of  an  ideal  queen. 

"'The  disease  attacks  the  extremities  first,'  ex- 
plained the  doctor  as  we  passed  by  these  two  standing 
in  the  shade  of  the  veranda.  'She  is  beautiful  now,  but 
later  on  it  will  come  to  her  face.' 

"What  the  doctor  knew,  the  girl  also  understood — 
the  disease  would  later  come  to  her  face.  She  stood 
there  holding  herself  erect,  as  if  proud  of  what  she 
still  possessed,  and  wondrous  fair  to  see,  with  her 
arm  laid  resting  about  the  waist  of  the  other  woman 


86  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

—this  other  woman,  who  was  always  present  as  a  liv- 
ing example  of  what  she  herself  would  soon  become." 

The  doctor  mentioned,  following  his  work  in  this 
Leper  Colony  of  Venezuela,  went  through  the  Bu- 
bonic Plague  in  India  and  in  China.  Scull  in  the 
Collier's  article  refers  to  him  as  continually  smoking 
cigarettes,  dwelling  at  length  upon  the  dexterity 
with  which  the  doctor  "rolled  his  own."  After  Scull 
returned  to  New  York  he  sent  a  copy  of  Collier's 
to  the  doctor.  The  doctor,  it  happened,  never 
smoked.  He  is  rather  particular  about  this  and  he 
wrote  Scull  immediately  expressing  his  surprise  at 
any  necessity  of  having  to  refer  to  him  as  a  smoker 
when  he,  Scull,  knew  his  aversion  even  to  the  odor 
of  tobacco. 

*'I  will  never  forget,"  writes  the  doctor,  "Scull's 
reply  to  my  criticism.  He  said  that  he  knew  how 
easy  it  was  for  men  in  public  life  to  get  into  trouble 
in  Venezuela  and  on  what  small  x^i'etext  they  had 
been  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison  and  he  had 
purposely  inserted  this  allusion  to  my  smoking  in 
order  that  if  anything  came  of  the  article  that  I 
could  say  in  my  defense  that  this  man,  the  writer, 
never  knew  me  or  saw  me  because  everyone  in  offi- 
cial life  in  Venezuela  knew  my  aversion  to  smoking 
and  that  I  did  not  smoke.  Such  was  the  farsighted- 
ness of  this  man  Scull.  He  was  thinking  of  my 
defense  and  my  protection  all  the  time  he  was  writing. 

"I  can  never  forget  the  terrible  impression  the 
several  hundred  patients  in  that  hospital  made  upon 


VENEZUELA  87 

Scull.  His  sensitive  nature  revolted  at  the  horrible 
sights  which  confronted  him  and  his  sympathetic 
soul  was  filled  with  pity  for  the  sufferers  within  its 
walls.  He  told  me  that  he  never  realized  that  a  dis- 
ease could  be  so  terrible  and  wondered  how  humanity 
could  stand  it. 

"I  met  Scull  on  many  occasions  in  later  years  and 
he  never  failed  to  refer  to  this  sad  picture  which  had 
made  such  an  indelible  impression  on  his  mind  and 
which  seemed  to  have  seared  his  soul  with  horror. 
I  have  met  many  men  of  all  stations  in  various  parts 
of  the  world,  but  I  recall  but  few  who  had  the  broad 
sympathy  and  the  deep  regard  for  his  fellow  men 
that  possessed  Guy  Scull,  and  it  is  with  no  small 
degree  of  affectionate  regard  that  I  write  these  words 
concerning  him," 


Chapter  VIII 
THE    BALKANS— 1903 

Scull  missed  seeing  the  Big  War  the  year  he 
went  into  the  Balkans.  He  was  just  eleven  years 
too  soon.  There  was  a  mobilization,  innumerable 
skirmishes  between  irregular  mountain  forces  and  the 
Turks,  with  the  belligerent  Bulgarians  strutting  back 
and  forth  on  their  side  of  the  line,  and  the  Serbs,  Rou- 
manians and  Macedonians  kicking  up  a  dust  and 
threatening  to  start  something  along  their  line,  but — 
no  war.  Still,  as  the  Skipper  said,  "j^ou  never  can 
tell,  it  might  happen  and  agin  it  mightn't."  So  he 
quietly  disappeared  one  day  and  took  passage  east- 
ward. Those  who  knew  "Skip,"  remember  that  he 
prophesied  when  war  came  it  would  start  in  the 
Balkans,  and  he  was  right.  He  was  on  the  scene 
looking  for  it  in  1903.  He  tramped  up  and  down 
the  war  belt,  or  front  line,  or  whatever  such  zones 
were  called  in  those  days.  He  talked  with  the  mem- 
bers of  war  councils,  mixed  with  the  soldiers,  precipi- 
tated many  and  varied  clashes  between  the  authorities 
over  permission  to  get  into  what  squabbles  there 
were,  but  he  couldn't  find  the  war. 

Altogether  he  must  have  had  a  most  exciting  time 
but  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  "bunkie"  that  year,  we 


8i? 


THE    BALKANS  89 

would  not  have  a  line  to  tell  us  of  Scull's  adventures. 
This  bunkie  was  John  L.  C.  Booth,  an  artist  on  the 
staff  of  the  London  Graphic  and  a  war  correspon- 
dent whom  Scull  got  to  know  in  South  Africa  durmg 
the  Boer  War.  Booth  wrote  a  book  on  the  adven- 
tures of  himself  and  the  Skipper  and  illustrated  it. 

"Trouble  in  the  Balkans,"  is  the  title  of  this  book, 
and  it  is  dedicated  to  Scull.  Skip's  copy  had  on  the 
flyleaf  hi  Booth's  handwrituig: 

"To  Bear  Old  Scully  in  memory  of  many  Good 
Days.  John  L.  C.  Booth." 

"Trouble  in  the  Balkans"  starts  right  off,  first  line, 
first  chapter,  to  tell  about  Scull.    It  reads: 

'"Putties,  shooting-boots,  spurs   (h'm— one  strap 
broken),  pistol,  ammunition,  sketch  books,    and    so 
forth,  down  a  pencilled  'list  of  kit,'  as  the  objects 
mentioned   (barring  the  broken  strap)    were   fitted 
scientifically  into  a  sturdy  brown  kit-bag— a  dear  old 
travelled  thing,  with  a  patch  at  one  corner  put  on  at 
Ladysmith.      The    studio    was    thick   with    tobacco 
smoke,  and  the  autumn  sun,  filtering  through  the  top- 
light,  lit  and  glinted  on  small  piles  of  the  indispens- 
ables  of  a  man  preparing  for  rough  times  in  the  open. 
Out  of  the  comer  by  the  fire  a  newspaper  rustled 
jerkily,  and  'Skip's'  voice  observed:  'Say,  there's  hell 
to  pay  in  Raslog.    Here's  a  Renter  wire  says  insur- 
gents attacked  Turks  near  the  village  of  How-d'ye- 
call-it,   and   Turks    afterwards    entered   village   an' 
massacred  all  hands.     People  burnt  at  the  stake  an' 
a  real  hot  time  all  round.      An'    here's   Laffin-an'- 


90  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Jokin'  says  negotiations  broken  off  an'  war  consid- 
ered inevitable.  Whoopee!  boy,  if  we  can't  get  our 
throats  cut  this  time  you  can  call  us  slow!' 

"All  summer  the  Sultan's  troops  had  been  amus- 
ing themselves  on  the  above  lines,  and  now  it  seemed 
that  Bulgaria  was  going  to  strike  a  blow  for  her  fel- 
low Christians  over  the  border.    This  cheery  prophet 
in  the  corner — yachting  ten  days  before  at  North- 
East  Harbour,  U.  S.  A. — had  fired  himself  across 
the  Atlantic,  spurred  by  some  such  news  as  this  and 
'coming  up  with  a  song  from  the  sea'  found  me  in 
the  final  stages  of  'go-fever,'  the  only  cure  for  which 
is — to  go.     So  together  Skip  and  I  rushed  to  news- 
paper offices,  whose  comfortable  inhabitants  predicted 
a  lingering  and  untidy  death  and  rashly  entrusted  us 
with  the  supply  of  a  little  news  from  the  Balkans — 
the  good  old  Balkans,  where  there's  always  something 
doing.     So  the  kit  was  packed,  the  old  studio  locked 
up,  and  we  rolled  away  under  the  Victoria  signals, 
'pulling  out  on  the  trail  again.'    And  now,  suddenly, 
the  enclosing  walls  of  the  London  life  fell  away  from 
us,  and  dwindled,  with  all  that  was  written  on  them, 
to  littleness  and  unimportance.     One's  mind  looked 
from  a  balloon  and  saw    shops,    'buses,    Tuppenny 
Tube,  offices  and  editors  as  tiny  things  in  an  ant  city. 
Nothing  behind  mattered.    Everything  important  lay 
in  that  vague  country  ahead,  pictured  already  in  im- 
agination.   Two  hours  later,  great-coated  and  hands 
in  pockets,  we  were  on  the  wet  deck  of  the  Flushing 
steamer,  leaning  against  a  solid  wind  that  blew  one's 


Hixrixc  THoiiii.i':  i.\   iiii-:  hai.kans 


From   a  diairini/  hii  ./.   /,.   r.    Itnulli    in   liis  hnnl,-.  ■■'!  rmililr  in   llii    Unllidiif 


THE    BALKANS  91 

moustache  into  all  sorts  of  shapes,  and  smelling  the 
good  North  Sea  outside  Queensborough  harbour." 

They  spent  a  night  in  Holland,  pushed  on  again 
across  Germany  and  stopped  off  a  couple  of  nights 
in  Vienna,  the  Skipper  running  the  customs  "with 
everything  on  him  including  a  big  Colt  at  his  hip," 
and  nothing  in  his  trunks.  Booth  describes  one  night 
spent  in  a  Vienna  cafe  amid  much  music  and  gaiety 
and  tells  how  the  Skip  picked  up  a  strange  instru- 
ment which  he  called  a  "double-shafted"  guitar  and 
made  real  music  on  it  much  to  the  delight  of  the 
Viennese. 

From  Vienna  they  crossed  into  Serbia  and  from 
thence  went  into  Bulgaria,  encountering  many  ad- 
ventures of  a  peaceful  nature.  At  Sofia  they  found 
the  air  full  of  war  talk.  Troops  were  on  the  frontier, 
resources,  stores  and  supplies  dumped  at  the  rail- 
roads. The  two  strangers  had  a  wonderful  time 
fraternizing  with  the  soldiers  and  the  politicians. 
They  marched  with  the  troops  and  they  marched  by 
themselves.  Becoming  bored  with  the  guides  they 
gave  these  same  guides  the  slip  and  tried  short  cuts  to 
the  nearest  trouble  zone,  were  caught  and  examined 
by  sundry  authorities,  the  Skipper  in  each  case  as- 
suming command  of  the  situation  and  in  his  American 
fashion  bluffing  it  through.  Then  they  would  prom- 
ise to  be  good  and  go  back  to  the  regular  lines  of 
travel.  For  weeks  they  slept  in  the  open  or  on  some 
bench  in  a  mountain  cabin.  Booth  describes  one 
evening  adventure  as  follows: 


92  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"An  outside  staircase  from  the  yard  led  to  the  bed- 
room, and  its  window  looked  out  on  to  a  wooden 
balcony  occupied  by  a  flock  of  geese  which  flapped 
and  cackled  to  the  banishment  of  all  sleep.  In  due 
time  from  Skip's  bed  came  a  muffled  voice — 'Say, 
you  fellas,  why  don't  you  chase  those  dam  ducks 
out  o'  that?' 

"  'Your  job,'  yawned  the  Oof -bird;*  'you  two  both 
nearer  the  window  than  I  am.' 

"  'If  I  move,'  said  I,  'this  rickety  bed  of  mine'll 
fall  to  pieces.  Go  on,  one  of  you.'  Here  ensued  a 
mighty  tramping  on  the  staircase  as  half  a  dozen 
men  advanced  and  drove  the  geese  shrieking  into  the 
yard.  But  the  cure  was  worse  than  the  disease,  for 
the  new  flock  brought  chairs,  sat  down  on  the  bal- 
cony, and  held  a  heated  revolutionary  meeting. 

"We  woke  to  find  Dubnitza  in  the  throes  of  mar- 
ket-day, and  after  the  solemn  rite  of  Slivovitz  had 
been  celebrated,  bored  our  way  out  of  the  town 
through  a  close-packed  mob  of  ponies,  oxen,  wagons, 
sheep,  fruit-stalls  and  some  hundreds  of  queer-look- 
ing beings.  Not  least  of  these  was  our  new  driver, 
a  person  of  most  villainous  countenance  and  a  wall- 
eye. He  was  swathed  from  armpits  to  thigh  in 
enough  red  cloth  to  carpet  the  aisle  of  The  Abbey, 
in  the  folds  of  which  was  concealed  everything  he 
owned. 

"Past  the  barracks  and  cavalry  lines,  where  rows 
of  smart  little  horses  were  being  vigorously  groomed, 

*  Courier. 


THE    BALKANS 


93 


and  out  over  a  stout  bridge.  About  a  mile  doAvn  the 
road  the  trouble  began.  The  mummies  were  not  'for 
it,'  a  shambling  run  of  ten  yards  or  so  being  as  much 
as  they  could  manage  at  a  time.  'Skip,'  mounting 
the  box,  seized  the  whip  and  whaled  them  with  all- 
embracing    sweeps.      Twice    in    twenty    yards    the 


ON  THE  WAY  TO  SAMAKOV 

driver's  fur  cap  spun  from  his  head  into  the  dust,  and 
the  long  lash  accurately  picked  out  the  faces  of  the 
unhappy  inside  passengers.  However,  the  beasts 
woke  up  a  little,  and  under  continued  treatment  main- 
tained a  steady  average  of  three  miles  an  hour  as  far 
as  a  little  roadside  inn.  Here  'Skip'  with  streaming 
face  threw  the  broken  whip  in  the  road  and  rested 
from  his  labours." 


94  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

Finally  tired  out  with  their  barterings  and  bicker- 
ings for  guidance  to  the  front  Booth  and  Scull  de- 
cided to  give  both  soldiers  and  politicians  the  slip  and 
attempt  to  reach  a  band  of  irregular  forces  who  were 
constantly  at  war  with  the  Turks  in  the  mountains. 
So  they  hid  away  in  the  hills  and  finally  located  a 
revolutionary  leader  who  arranged  for  a  conference 
with  his  chiefs.  The  conference  came  off  with  all  the 
stage  settings  of  a  regular  Bowery  melodrama. 

"A  tearing  wind  blew  out  of  the  darkness  down  the 
ill-lit  main  street,"  writes  Booth.  "The  cafe  lights 
at  the  comer  and  the  chinks  of  the  shuttered  street- 
windows  glimmered  through  a  whirl  of  dust,  leaves, 
scraps  of  paper  and  powdered  rubbish  which  the  gale 
whisked  up  and  carried  with  it. 

"In  the  gloom  of  a  wall,  sneezing  in  the  thick 
smother,  we  waited  and  watched  the  street  corner. 
Across  the  road  a  dark  form  stood  in  a  doorway  and 
watched  the  watchers.  Now  and  then  a  man  passed, 
hunched  against  the  wind  and  holding  his  hat  on. 
Suddenly  round  the  corner  came  a  short  figure  hurry- 
ing past  us  with  a  wave  of  the  hand.  At  ten  yards' 
distance  we  followed,  stumbling  over  the  rough  road- 
way with  the  grit  filling  eyes  and  nostrils,  till  our 
guide  slowed  down  at  a  deserted  corner  and  let  us 
come  up  with  him. 

"  'It's  all  right,'  he  said  in  a  hoarse  whisper;  'he 
will  be  there.  Come  quickly  and  make  no  noise.' 

"On  again  down  an  utterly  dark  alley,  falling  over 
great  stones  and  splashing  through  an  invisible  stream 


THE    BALKANS  95 

which  ran  do^vn  the  middle.  At  the  end  was  a  high 
wall  over  which  sounded  a  threshing  of  branches. 
The  short  man  rat-tatted  a  private  signal  on  a  high 
double-door.  As  we  stood  silent  a  gust  carried  a  rush 
of  dry  leaves  round  the  wall,  and  a  roaring  of  wind 
and  trees  came  out  of  the  darkness  behind  it.  A  girl 
opened  the  door,  barred  it  after  us,  and  led  through 
dark  tree-masses  up  invisible  steps  and  down  a  nar- 
row passage  to  where  a  little  oil  lamp  burned  weakly 
in  a  low  room.     *     *     * 

"A  sallow-faced  man,  with  a  short,  black  beard  and 
moustache,  came  in  with  a  handful  of  papers,  glanc- 
ing suspiciously  at  us ;  but  the  sight  of  our  reverend 
friend  reassured  him,  and  sitting  down  the  two  talked 
in  Bulgarian.  The  insurgent  wore  an  ordinary  black 
coat  and  soft  black  hat  tilted  back.  Behind  him  had 
come  his  despatch-bearer,  a  young  peasant,  who  sat 
on  the  divan  in  the  dim  background.  Whilst  the 
wind  howled  in  the  window-chinks  the  missionary 
unfolded  our  proposal  to  join  one  of  the  chetas,  or 
bands,  on  the  frontier. 

"  *Ah!  can  they  walk?'  asked  the  leader.  *It  is 
hard  work,  mind  you;  they  may  have  to  climb  all 
day.' 

"We  thought  we  were  equal  to  it. 

"  'And  it  will  mean  carrying  a  rifle  and  ammuni- 
tion— probably  fighting.' 

"We  would  do  what  we  could  in  that  direction, 
too.  And  now,  for  our  part,  what  about  getting  our 
news  and  sketches  sent  back? 


96  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"They  would  undertake  to  send  a  special  messen- 
ger whenever  practicable  to  bring  them  down  to  the 
nearest  post-office. 

"Question  and  answer  ran  on  in  the  same  guarded 
undertone.     As  we  sat,  all  four  heads  together,  it 
reminded  me  of  nothing  so    much    as    a    game    of 
'clumps,'  in  a  drawing-room  at  home,  only  that  our 
faces  could  not    approach   in    expression    the    tense 
seriousness  which  goes  to  the  unravelling  of  that 
knotty  problem,    'animal,    vegetable,    or    mineral?' 
The  oily  flame  of  the  little  lamp  was  right  behind  the 
insurgent's  head,  and  his  face — all  in  shadow — melted 
into  the  black  of  his  beard  and  humped  shoulders. 
The  yellow  light  touched  the  gray  locks  of  the  old 
missionary  and  emphasized  the  wrinkles  which  al- 
ways gave  the  suggestion  of  a  smile  to  his  face.    Old 
Skip's  fine  profile  was  sharply  outlined  against  the 
glare,  as  he  tapped  thoughtfully  on  the  crown  of  his 
battered  straw. 

"It  was  arranged  in  the  end  that  the  young  warrior 
sitting  there  in  the  corner  should  carry  to  the  leader 
of  a  band  in  the  mountains  the  offer  of  the  two  volun- 
teers, and  with  all  speed  return  with  the  answer.  In 
two  or  at  most  three  days  we  should  know  what  were 
the  prospects  of  seeing  life  with  the  avenging  hillmen. 
"Meanwhile  we  must  possess  our  souls  in  as  much 
patience  as  might  be,  and  work  up  the  leg-muscles. 
Finally,  we  were  sworn  to  profound  secrecy  as  to  our 
visit  and  all  things  connected  with  it." 

The  two  correspondents  waited  patiently  for  the 


THE    BALKANS  97 

word  to  start,  writing  each  day  letters  to  their  re- 
spective publications. 

"Keeping  up  the  Natal  tradition,"  writes  Booth, 
"we  never  shaved  on  mail  day  till  the  work  was  off. 
The  two  little  bedroom  tables  were  pulled  out,  gar- 
nished with  paper  and  great  store  of  tobacco,  and 
there  followed  many  hours  of  solemn  silence  with  an 
occasional  voice  demanding  the  name  of  a  bridge, 
or  the  number  of  troops  at  Nastikoff.  The  flies 
buzzed  in  and  out  of  the  open  windows,  the  shabby 
draggle-tailed  geese  took  dust-baths  in  the  baking 
street,  and  'Skip's'  indelible  pencil  straggled  on  and 
on.  Whenever  he  was  at  a  loss  for  a  word  it  was  his 
habit  to  scratch  his  head  with  the  point  of  this  pencil 
to  stimulate  his  brain;  indeed,  it  wandered  indiffer- 
ently up  and  down  his  person,  till  by  the  end  of  the 
day  he  was  all  over  purple  blotches.  Then  he  would 
charge  the  post-office  with  his  fat  envelopes,  full  of 
fierce  determination  not  to  miss  the  mail,  and  the  peo- 
ple would  fade  away  from  before  him  at  the  sight  of 
that  tattooed  face  as  they  would  before  an  armed 

cannibal. 

"With  the  work  safely  off,  soap  and  Avater  flew 
through  the  air,  razors  flashed  and  hair-brushes 
waved.  Each  man  put  on  his  other  shirt,  tied  his  tie 
or  folded  his  stock  with  fearful  precision,  and  sallied 
out  to  dine  with  the  Mountain  Gunners. 

"There  were  about  a  dozen  of  them  there,  of  all 
sorts  and  sizes,  in  the  dark-blue  day-jackets  of  their 
battery— Prince  Boris's  Own— with  trim  beards  or 


98  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

shaven  chins,  and  sturdy,  useful-looking  men  all. 
Very  simple  and  undecorated  their  mess-room,  with 
its  bare  floor  and  white  walls. 

"'Here,  do  you  see?' — the  Major  led  us  by  the  arms 
to  a  portrait  of  the  boy  prince,  Bulgaria's  heir-appar- 
ent— 'here  is  our  Colonel.  We  are  his  regiment — 
proud!'  He  pointed  to  his  little  Colonel's  silver  in- 
itial on  his  epaulette.     'Now  we  will  dine.' 

"And  dine  we  did!  First  liqueur — two  or  three 
glasses  were  de  rigeur.  Then  we  entered  into  a 
labyrinth  of  strange  meats,  soups,  and  wondrous 
foods  which  all  happened  where  they  were  least  ex- 
pected and  followed  each  other  with  breathless  speed. 
In  the  merry-go-round  I  recognized  split  sausages, 
and  distinctly  remember  some  fat  unknown  vegetable 
which  we  took  with  our  fingers  from  a  dish  in  the 
middle  of  the  table.  I  never  met  it  before  or  since. 
The  shower  of  dishes  covered  a  determined  attack 
on  our  sobriety  by  all  troops  present,  and  the  men 
on  each  side,  armed  with  flagons  of  vino  and  raki, 
poured  in  a  steady  stream  of  fire-water. 

"Out  of  the  stacks  of  crockery  stood  up  some  silver 
models  of  different  sized  shells,  their  own  little  seven- 
pounder  among  them.  This  was  the  only  specimen 
of  mess-plate,  and  it  was  easy  to  see  that  in  ordinary 
times  the  whole  tone  of  the  mess  was  simplicity  and  a 
complete  absence  of  luxury  of  any  kind.  They  live 
as  soldiers  of  a  past  age,  and  easy  chairs  and  lounges 
are  no  part  of  their  life. 

"As  the  last  of  the  panorama  of  plates  disappeared 


THE    BALKANS  99 

and  tobacco  smoke  mingled  over  the  table,  the  Major 
sent  for  his  mandoline  and  charmed  us  with  the  music 
of  his  country.  He  laid  his  hand  on  it  so  that  it 
talked  and  told  us  through  those  plaintive  airs  all  that 
the  men  of  old  time  had  suffered  under  the  Turkish 
yoke — the  yearnings  and  cryings  of  a  people  in  bond- 
age. Slowly  it  told  of  the  labour  and  the  burden  too 
heavy  to  bear,  then  in  came  a  sad  little  song  of  weari- 
ness, and  on  this  a  growing  protest  rising  to  a  wild 
burst  of  rage  against  the  oppressor,  and  an  outcr}^  for 
help.  Then  it  died  down — impotent,  hopeless — to 
take  up  the  colourless,  profitless  work  in  the  heat 
again.  Plainer  than  any  words  were  the  little  melo- 
dies, made  long  ago,  not  with  cunning  but  out  of  the 
sorrow  of  the  soul. 

"The  regimental  songster  now  came  on,  and  pro- 
duced familiar  friends  from  Faust  and  II  Trova- 
tore  from  great  strength  and  without  accompaniment. 
Then  Skip  and  I  put  up  'A  Hot  Time  in  the  Old 
Town  To-night' — alack !  that  our  'war-drum'  had  had 
to  be  left  behind  in  Sofia — and  more  classic  song  of 
the  same  ilk.  A  fine  warlike  ballad  in  Bulgarian, 
with  a  fiery  chorus  of  all  the  gallant  Gunners,  cleared 
th^  way  for  the  big  plum  of  the  evening,  a  fighting- 
drinking  song,  the  first  verse  of  which  might  be 
roughly  put  down  as: 

**  'After  battle  fierce  and  gory, 
*A11  ablaze  with  fame  and  glory, 
*Give  us,  while  we  tell  the  story, 
*Vino,  vino — 
'Wine  to  cheer  the  heart.' 


100  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

or  words  to  that  effect.  The  'Vino,  vino'  chorus  is 
easy,  and  so  is  the  tune,  and  we  all  stood  up  and  waved 
glasses  in  the  vibrating  air  and  roared  at  the  full 
pitch  of  our  lungs.  Oh  Lord!  the  row!  Again  and 
again  the  bellowing  rose,  with  glass  clinkings  and 
vows  of  good  fellowship. 

"Whilst  they  all  wrote  their  unspeakable  names  in 
my  sketchbook  I  heard  Skip  translating  'Down  the 
Road,  Away  Went  Polly'  into  German — 'das  ist  ein 
Pf erd' — for  the  benefit  of  a  polite  but  mystified  officer 
whose  acquaintance  with  'Mr.  Gus  Elen'  (as  near  as 
he  could  get  Scull's  name)  was  but  then  beginning. 
After  we  two  had  delivered  'For  He's  a  Jolly  Good 
Fellow'  for  the  special  benefit  of  the  Major,  best  of 
hosts,  the  whole  train-band — jolly  good  fellows  all — 
saw  us  back  to  the  local  Carlton  and  left  us." 

The  next  day  the  battery  went  off  hurriedly  on 
a  march  in  the  hills  and  on  special  invitation  the  two 
strangers  went  along  with  them.  They  marched  up 
the  mountains  and  found,  according  to  Booth,  much 
evidence  of  Turkish  raids  and  barbarity,  but  no  action 
on  the  part  of  the  battery.  In  the  valley  town  they 
waited  a  few  more  days  for  the  word  and  at  last  it 
came.    It  was  "no  go." 

This,  once  and  for  all,  decided  them  that  in  ac- 
cepting government  hospitality  they  were  only  losing 
time  and  being  "strung  along,"  as  "Skip"  said,  by  the 
authorities.  So  they  prepared,  in  "Skip's"  slang,  to 
"hop  the  reservation"  and  one  mornmg  they  just  cas- 
ually disappeared.     Once  out  of  sight  of  the  last 


THE    BALKANS  101 

village  outpost  they  took  to  the  hills  and  struck  out  in 
the  direction  where  from  all  they  had  heard  they 
might  expect  the  first  trouble  and  see  the  first  evi- 
dence of  this  barbarous  border  warfare.  In  doing  all 
this  they  deliberately  courted  trouble.  They  were 
chased  bj^^  the  police.  They  were  chased  by  the  army. 
They  were  hidden  and  fed  by  the  natives  with  whom 
Skip  made  instant  conversation  and  established 
friendly  relations  despite  the  fact  he  could  not  speak 
a  word  of  their  language.  Thej'^  became  lost,  suf- 
fered from  hunger  and  from  exposure  but  kept  push- 
ing on  hoping,  by  some  chance,  to  meet  up  with  or 
be  captured  by  some  "cheta"  and  either  be  held  for 
ransom  or  put  behind  a  rock  and  made  to  fight, 
which,  after  all,  was  what  they  had  come  for.  They 
met  several  rebel  leaders  in  disguise  and  parleyed 
with  them  but  to  all  of  no  use.  The  last  conference 
ran  well  into  the  night  with  much  hope.  But,  alas 
Booth  describes  the  end  of  it  as  follows: 

"We  all  talked  volubly  in  the  sign-language,  and 
my  partner's  imitation  of  shooting  Turks  was  en- 
tirely convincing.  I  often  think  of  those  conversa- 
tions and  all  we  told  each  other,  and  then  remember, 
marvelling,  that  not  six  words  could  have  been 
spoken. 

"It  was  plain  that  they  had  been  trying  to  get 
through  into  Macedonia,  but  without  success.  The 
application  of  a  little  vino  conjured  up  brighter 
hopes  for  the  future,  and  the  possibility  of  two  of  the 
Foreign  Legion  joining  them  in  another  dash  for  lib- 


102  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

erty  and  what-d'you-call  it.  We  parted  firm  friends 
and  went  to  bed. 

"At  the  horrid  hour  of  midnight  a  light  flashed  in 
my  face  and  dark  figures  filled  the  room.  Someone 
apologized  in  French  for  the  intrusion  of  the  police. 
Out  of  a  dark  corner  came  'Skip's'  drowsy  Boston 
voice:  'This  is  where  little  Willie  goes  to  gaol.'  I 
saw  the  pair  of  us  transported  to  Sofia  loaded  with 
chains — legs  tied  tinder  the  ponies — to  be  tried  for 
high  treason  or  lese  majeste,  or  some  such  peccadillo. 
The  imposing  parade  only  wanted  to  see  the  pass- 
ports of  their  casual  visitors,  and  thumped  out  again 
with  their  lanterns. 

"At  breakfast  their  spokesman,  a  stout  doctor, 
came  to  renew  his  apologies,  and  was  himself  decoyed 
into  the  conspiracy,  so  that  before  the  morning  was 
out  he  was  in  close  confab  with  the  ring-leader  in  the 
underground  drinking  den,  egged  on  by  the  foreign 
fellas.  But  the  bandsmen  had  thought  better  of  it 
in  the  night,  and  little  old  Bulgaria  was  good  enough 
for  them. 

'"Too  late — too  late  for  this  year.'  Besides,  the 
Turks'  peasant-shooting  season  had  closed. 

"  'In  the  spring — yes,  if  the  Englishmen  come  back 
in  the  spring  we  will  take  them  with  pleasure.' 

"We  climbed  back  into  the  air  again — dead  fail- 
ures. 

"  'Huh!  Bet  your  life!  There'll  be  trouble  in  the 
Balkans    in    the    spring.'    quoted    Skip    ironically. 


THE    BALKANS  103 

'Where's  their  grit?  Don't  amount  to  a  hill  o' 
beans.' 

''The  doctor  was  emphatic  on  the  hopelessness  of 
any  further  attempt,  and  there  was  nothing  for  it  but 
the  home  trail. 

"At  half-past  four  the  next  morning  we  sat  in  the 
dark  eating  bread  and  cheese  and  swallowing  tchai 
(thin  tea  and  sliced  lemon  in  a  glass) ,  waiting  for  the 
dawn.  Not  till  six  was  there  light  enough  to  see  the 
trail.  The  hot  streams  were  steaming  in  the  cold  dusk 
as  we  cantered  down  the  valley  with  a  sporting  peas- 
ant on  a  smart  bay  pony.  Away  over  the  Sunday 
trail,  till  up  in  the  hills  we  halted  to  watch  the  sun 
rise  through  rolling  pink  clouds  over  the  mountains 
of  Macedonia. 

"Neither  yearned  to  ascend  the  toboggan  shute — 
*nema,  nema !'  Cunningly  we  chose  a  way  leading  by 
gentle  stages  round  the  obstruction,  forgetting  the 
base  treachery  of  mountain  trails.  The  pestilent  path 
tacked  uphill  and  lured  us  further  from  our  point  at 
each  leg  of  it.  Then,  having  landed  its  victims  in  the 
thick  of  a  young  pine  forest  and  four  inches  of  snow, 
it  vanished  without  a  word.  Towing  the  ponies,  we 
made  a  bee-line  through  those  crowded  Christmas- 
trees  to  the  crest.  The  bushes  grew  close  together 
like  turnips  and  shot  avalanches  of  snow  down  the 
necks  of  our  open  shirts.  Under  the  wet  snow  on  the 
ground  were  invisible  logs,  and  every  ten  yards  one 
of  us  was  flat  on  his  face  with  a  grunting  pony  on 
top  of  him. 


104  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"  *By — the  ten — colours,'  growled  Skip  between 
his  clenched  teeth,  pulling  his  old  hat  out  of  a  drift 
and  welting  his  jibbing  animal  from  behind,  'whoever 
made  you — made  a  mistake!' 

"Sodden  from  head  to  heel  and  sweating  in  the 
sun,  we  struck  the  cross-track  on  the  summit  and 
jogged  along  the  top  of  the  divide  to  pick  up  our 
down- trail  at  the  woodcutter's  camp.  Some  eagles 
circled  in  the  air  over  the  carcase  of  a  sheep,  and 
waiting  till  one  settled  on  a  dead  tree  I  stalked  him 
with  the  Webley — and  missed. 

***** 


"At  half  past  five  in  the  evening  we  steamed  into 
Sofia  station  in  the  rain.  Empty,  sloppy  streets; 
empty,  smelly  hotel.  No  news,  and  everything  gone 
flat  as  a  punctured  air-balloon.  The  town  was  dead 
and  all  our  'gang'  gone  home. 

"We  packed  our  kits  and  followed  them." 
While  Scull  was  thus  posing  as  a  human  target 
between  the  lives  of  the  Turks  and  the  Bulgarians 
all  this  time,  the  following  is  a  sample  of  the  cheery 
letters  he  was  writing  home  to  his  mother: 

Sofia,  Oct.  6,  1903. 

Booth  and  I  arrived  here  yesterday  and  are  now 
about  to  start  for  Kostendil  to  have  a  look  at  the 


THE    BALKANS  105 

Bulgarian  defenses  there.    This  is  a  fine  climate  and 
I  am  in  splendid  shape.    Love  to  all. 

Or  this: 

Sofia,  Oct.  26,  1903. 

As  we  have  learned  now  that  this  is  Marjorie's 
wedding  day  Booth  and  I  will  proceed  to  drink  her 
health.  This  affair  in  Bulgaria  is  about  played  out. 
Concerning  money  I  have  plenty  and  my  health  is 
excellent. 

Marjorie  was  Guy's  sister  and  she  was  married 
on  this  date  to  Bartlett  H.  Hayes,  Scull's  roommate 
at  Harvard. 


Chapter  IX. 
MANCHURIA— 1904-1905 

Scull  apparently  had  a  keen  sense  for  these  In- 
ternational embroglios.  Like  the  silent  men  in  Fleet 
Street,  Wilhelmstrasse,  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  and 
other  foreign  offices  he  had  his  ear  to  the  ground  con- 
stantly. The  year  before  when  in  Europe  he  then 
had  a  hunch  that  there  was  going  to  be  something 
doing  in  the  Far  East  and  instead  of  taking  an  At- 
lantic liner  westward  bound  he  caught  a  ship  going 
east  and  got  as  far  as  Port  Said  before  he  learned 
that  the  Japs  and  the  Russians  had  settled  their  dif- 
ferences. He  then  faced  about  and  headed  for  New 
York  again.  It  seems,  however,  that  this  was  the 
time  he  guessed  wrong!  Japan  declared  war  Febru- 
ary 10,  1904,  and  it  caught  the  wily  Scull  flat-footed 
in  New  York. 

I  remember  meeting  him  about  noon  one  cold  Feb- 
ruary day  in  front  of  120  Broadway.  The  Skipper 
had  just  had  one  of  his  skin  tight  hair  cuts  which  was 
always  a  sure  sign  of  trouble  somewhere.  He  was 
minus  an  overcoat.  His  coat  collar  was  turned  up 
around  his  neck,  his  derby  jammed  down  to  his  ears 
and  his  hands  thrust  deep  in  his  trousers'  pockets. 
The  Skipper  never  did  like  overcoats. 

"Ahoy,"  greeted  Scull. 

IQS 


MANCHURIA  107 

"Let's  lunch.    What  d'y'  say?"  returned  I. 

"Can't.     Got  a  hurry." 

"Where  you  going?" 

"Manchuria,  vee-a  Grand  Sintrall  Station,"  in  the 
Skipper's  best  nasal  drawl  and  New  England  dia- 
lect. 

He  turned  with  a  "so  long"  and  lost  himself  in 
the  crowd  pushing  up  Broadway  towards  City  Hall 
Station. 

Another  fellow  Who  met  him  shortly  afterwards  in 
the  Yale  Club  uptown,  says  "Scull's  manner  was 
most  casual,  but  his  hair  was  clipped  and  his  coat 
collar  turned  up  and  I  naturally  was  expectant  when 
I  asked  him  where  he  was  bound.  'Manchuria,'  said 
the  Skipper  as  indifferently  as  a  suburbanite  might 
say  Yonkers  or  Tuckahoe. 

"He  had  a  passport,  credentials,  a  ticket  and  a  few 
little  things  like  that  to  pick  up  and  he  would  meet  me 
at  the  Harvard  Club  about  five  that  afternoon.  He 
was  there  when  I  came  around  and  so  were  most  of 
his  friends.  There  were  a  good  many  stirrup-cups  and 
joshings;  but  no  one  seemed  to  know  just  when  the 
'Skip'  left  for  the  front.  He  hadn't  mentioned  this 
detail  to  Dave  Goodrich  or  Leo  Ware,  whom  I  con- 
sulted, though  they  had  a  hack  with  his  bags  outside 
as  an  ordinary  precaution.  We  also  conferred  con- 
cerning 'our  special  correspondent's'  passport  and 
ticket,  which  he  had  casually  stuffed  in  his  vest  pocket 
and  which  had  already  been  picked  up  from  the  floor 
or  under  chairs  and  tables  a  dozen  times.    The  ticket 


108  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

was  originally  wound  up  into  a  cylinder  about  the 
size  of  an  alarm-clock,  and,  when  not  bouncing  about 
the  carpet,  had  a  disquieting  habit  of  flowing  out  of 
the  Skipper's  bosom  and  festooning  its  coils  about 
his  arms  and  legs.  Sometimes  it  played  with  the 
passport  and  sometimes  it  parted  with  it  for  another 
corner  of  the  room.  This  ticket  called  for  transporta- 
tion from  New  York  to  Yokohama,  and  it  looked 
as  if  it  might  itself  reach  a  good  part  of  the  way. 
Each  time  it  was  returned  its  owner  always  received 
it  back  with  a  composure  that  no  one  else  could  feel. 

"A  little  after  half -past-six,  I  broke  into  the  Skip- 
per's calm  enjoyment  of  his  friends  and  asked  when 
his  train  left.  'Five  minutes  to  seven  tonight — 
Why,'  he  responded.  I  explained  why  after  our 
hack  got  into  a  blockade,  with  five  blocks  to  go  and 
seven  minutes  to  do  it  in  and  make  the  train.  The 
Skipper  leaned  out  and  exhorted  the  hackman  to 
make  a  sporting  proposition  of  it.  Most  of  the  ticket 
went  out  of  the  window,  too ;  but  I  managed  to  reel 
it  in  again  as  the  driver  took  to  the  sidewalk,  neatly 
grazing  a  hj^drant  hazard. 

"The  Montreal  Express  left  that  night  pursued 
by  a  porter  who  had  some  difficulty  in  throwing  two 
huge  bags  aboard  the  rear  platform  of  the  last  car. 
The  Skipper  clung  carelessly  to  the  tail  railing  and 
waved  me  good-bye  with  the  finished  ease  of  a  brake- 
man.  As  he  waved,  the  tail  lights  showed  that  he 
was  playing  Laocoon  to  most  of  the  ticket  and  before 
I  turned  away — and  the  last  glimpse  I  had  of  him — 


MANCHURIA  109 

the  Skipper  was  gravely  engaged  in  earnest  consul- 
tation with  the  brakeman,  who  had  picked  up  the 
passport  from  the  platform." 

Such  was  the  Skipper's  departure  for  the  Japa- 
nese-Russian War.    In  a  package  of  letters  kept  by 
his  mother  the  first  received  was  written  on  a  Cana- 
dian Pacific  train  bound  westward,  dated  February 
11,  1904,  announcing  that  he  would  sail  from  Van- 
couver on  the  Empress  of  China  for  Japan,  that  he 
was  well  and  had  commissions  to  write  for  the  Globe 
and  Advertiser,  Boston  Transcript  and  for  Harpers. 
These  letters  cover  a  period  of  a  little  over  a  year 
and  are  written  at  regular  intervals  of  a  week  or  ten 
days.  In  them  there  is  little  save  messages  of  love  and 
affection,  a  word  as  to  his  health  and  another  as  to 
the  uncertainty  of  his  movements  in  the  future  as  he 
was  dependent  upon  the  pleasure  of  the  Japanese 
Government  which  was  not  announcing  its  plans  to 
the  correspondents  assembled.    These  letters  are  writ- 
ten upon  all  sorts  of  queer  looking  stationery,  covered 
with  Japanese  stamps  and  hieroglyphics,    some    of 
them  from  Tokio,   some  from   headquarters   of   the 
Second  Army  in  the  field,  many   mutilated   by  the 
censor  and  all  of  them  travel-stained  from  the  passage 
across  two  continents  as  they  were  addressed  to  his 
Mother  either  in  Boston  or  Andover,  Mass.,  or  to 
different  ports  in  Europe  or  m  the  Mediterranean 
where  she  was  then  traveling.    One  dated  March  8th, 
announces  that  his  ship  will  probably  land  in  a  Jap- 
anese port  on  the  morrow. 


110  GUY   HAMILTON   SCULL 

Scull  reached  Tokio  in  early  March  and  was  quar- 
tered at  the  Imperial  Hotel  with  a  group  of  other 
correspondents  including  the  best  known  writers  in 
Europe  and  the  United  States  at  that  time.  These 
men  hung  around  this  hotel  from  then  until  July 
18th  waiting  for  permission  and  their  passports  to 
join  the  army  at  the  front.  None  of  them  were  in 
any  better  luck  than  Scull. 

Most  of  them  waited.  A  few  "jumped  the  reser- 
vation" so  to  speak,  and  tried  for  Port  Arthur  on 
their  own  account.  Scull  did  not  file  thousands  of 
words  to  his  editors  about  this  tedious  wait.  He  did 
not  fuss  and  complain  or  attempt  to  rag  the  Im- 
perial Japanese  authorities.  Scull  had  been  up 
against  Government  restrictions  before.  He  and  a 
few  close  companions  had  a  good  time  seeing  Japan 
and  when  the  Army  was  ready  to  let  the  correspon- 
dents go  forward  Scull  trailed  with  the  rest. 

How  these  correspondents  spent  their  time  during 
this  tedious  wait  is  best  told  by  some  of  themselves  in 
the  pages  that  follow.  The  Skipper  writes  that  on 
July  18th  they  were  off  at  last  on  the  S.S.  Empress 
of  China,  the  same  one  that  brought  him  across  from 
Vancouver,  and  that  they  were  going  to  Nagasaki, 
leave  the  ship  there  and  proceed  by  train  to  Mogi 
and  so  on  by  horseback  with  the  replacement  troops 
and  transports  to  the  front  up  north  somewhere. 

The  list  of  the  correspondents  gathered  there  at 
the  Imperial  Hotel  included:  W.  H.  Brill  of  Scripps 
McCrea,  John  F.  Bass  and  Richard  Little  of  Chi- 


MANCHURIA  HI 

cago,  Franklin  Clarkin  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  Richard  Harding  Davis,  Richard  Barry,  Rob- 
ert Collins  of  the  Associated  Press,  London;  Robert 
Dunn  of  New  York  and  Boston;  George  Kennan, 
the  Russian  traveler;  Richmond  Smith  and  Percival 
Smith;  Lionel  James  of  the  London  Times;  Sam- 
uel B.  Trisell;  O.  K.  Davis  of  the  New  York  Sun; 
George  Lynch  of  London;  John  Fox  Jr.,  Grant 
Wallis;  Martin  Egan  then  of  the  Associated  Press, 
and  others. 

One  of  them  gives  a  touch  of  the  life  at  Tokio. 

"I  met  Scull  on  the  dock  at  Tokio,"  he  says,  "and 
I  hadn't  seen  him  before  since  we  met  down  the  Bay 
in  New  York  harbor,  several  years  before,  meeting 
the  U.  S.  Minister  to  Venezuela  where  there  was  at 
that  time  some  little  eruption.  Scull  was  in  Tokio 
waiting  like  the  rest  of  us.  He  eventually  did  go 
with  Oku's  Army  while  I  was  fated  to  be  stationed 
permanently  at  Tokio  until  after  the  signing  of  peace 
nearly  two  years  later.  I  had  to  cover  the  Anny 
and  Navy  Departments  and  the  Foreign  Office  and 
the  Legations  and  really  had  little  time  to  foregather 
with  anybody.  But  Guy,  the  late  Richard  Harding 
Davis,  the  late  John  Fox,  Jr.,  Franklin  Clarkin, 
George  Lynch  of  London,  Lionel  James  of  the  Lon- 
don Times,  Bill  Brill  and  one  or  two  others  used  to 
get  together  for  meals  whenever  we  could.  There 
were  a  great  many  amusing  and  amazing  stories  that 
developed,  but  I  don't  recall  any  of  them  in  which 
Guy  figures  particularly. 


112  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

"One  of  the  funniest  of  these  stories  has  never  been 
reported,  and,  of  course,  it  could  not  be  tied  to  Guy 
Scull  because  I  am  pretty  sure  he  was  not  present. 
It  was  the  custom  of  a  large  number  of  correspon- 
dents to  gather  at  the  bar  of  the  Imperial  Hotel 
every  evening  about  five-thirty  for  a  drink  and  a  little 
talk  about  the  day's  developments.  On  one  particu- 
lar day  there  arrived  an  East  Indian  who  had  with 
him  a  large  pet  snake.  He  was  a  drinking  man  and 
he  and  the  snake  entrenched  themselves  early  in  the 
afternoon  at  a  table  very  close  to  the  counter.  I 
arrived  about  five,  before  any  of  the  crowd  had  come 
and  at  that  time  the  snake  had  wrapped  himself 
around  the  man's  arm  a  couple  of  times,  with  part  of 
its  body  resting  on  his  lap  and  with  its  long  out- 
stretched head  investigating  the  drinks  on  the  table. 
Realizing  the  possibilities  of  the  setting,  I  got  me 
one  of  those  high  billiard  table  chairs  that  you  will 
recall,  and  for  about  half  an  hour  watched  the  effect 
of  the  Indian  and  snake  on  the  arriving  correspon- 
dents. Pretty  soon  the  Indian  went  to  sleep  and  the 
snake,  uncoiling  himself,  went  wandering  around  the 
bar.  The  bar  did  no  business  for  the  rest  of  the 
evening." 

A  correspondent  who  was  Scull's  bunkie  for  a  good 
part  of  the  time  that  Winter  in  Manchuria  found  the 
diary  he  kept  at  that  time  packed  away  in  his  dun- 
nage in  a  storage  warehouse  and  from  this  he  was 
able  to  write  an  intimate  account  of  the  Skipper  and 
his  adventures  in  that  campaign.     Scull  caught  up 


MANCHURIA  113 

with  him  at  Vancouver  where  he  was  waiting  for  the 
Empress  of  China  to  take  him  to  Japan.  Inciden- 
tally he  was  also  waiting  for  Bobby  Dmin  when  the 
Skipper  drifted  in. 

"Dmin  was  to  join  me  at  Vancouver  if  possible," 
says  Clarkin.  "He  had  bade  me  good-bye  at  Grand 
Central  Station  somewhat  gloomily  as  his  editor 
had  yet  made  no  decision  regarding  sending  him  to 
the  war  in  the  Far  East,  then  breaking.  Before  the 
'Empress'  pulled  out  Dunn  arrived — 'Dunn  and  his 
dunnage'  Scull  told  me — and  then  I  learned  that  they 
had  been  plaj^mates  and  college  mates.  So  the  pros- 
pects of  the  passage  looked  happy — three  of  us  who 
had  been  on  venturous  commissions  previously  now 
starting  together  elatedly  toward  the  hazards  of  a 
distant  horizon. 

"Out  of  six  voyages  across  the  Pacific  it  has  in- 
deed turned  out  that  none  has  yielded  me  so  many 
pleasant  memories.  Ship's  company  included  some 
British  military  attaches,  an  Austrian  naval  attache, 
the  American  Embassy  Secretary  returning  to  Tokio, 
and  only  one  woman — a  rather  forbidding  mission- 
ary. As  the  British  follow  form  even  more  rigor- 
ously in  out  of  the  way  places  than  in  London — to 
protect  their  morale,  they  say — the  rule  was  dress  for 
dinner  notwithstanding  the  almost  wholly  'stag'  pas- 
senger list.  Scull,  true  to  the  independence  of  spirit 
which  I  afterward  observed  more  and  more  and  ad- 
mired in  him,  declined,  with  comment,  to  go  through 
this  nightly  ceremony.    After  dinner  he  would,  how- 


114  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

ever,  enter  into  the  other  invariable  nightly  ritual; 
a  benedictine  with  Ferguson  of  the  Embassy,  a  cigar, 
then  a  game  of  fan  tan  by  all  the  smoking  room 
habitues  till  time  to  turn  in. 

"It  was  when  he  won  easily  at  fan-tan  that  I  first 
heard  him  chuckle  that  characteristic  phrase:  'Why, 
this  is  like  picking  strawberries  with  Genevieve.' 

"But  I  later  learned  in  the  hardships  of  the  field 
that  it  was  not  merely  when  things  cheered  him  that 
he  thus  broke  into  speech — when  things  looked  pretty 
discomforting  and  perilous  it  would  brace  the  rest  of 
us  to  hear  suddenly  from  the  least  garrulous — 'Why, 
fellers,  this  is  like  picking  strawberries  with  Gene- 
vieve!' However  strangely  morose  he  had  at  first 
appeared,  this  repeated  exclamation  somehow  flashed 
to  me  the  fact  that  the  Skipper,  as  Dunn  called  him, 
inwardly  was  of  buoyant  spirit. 

"I  find  in  my  diary,  at  a  time  when  we  were  in  camp 
awaiting  the  coming  of  the  battle  of  Shi-li-ho,  this 
entry: 

"  'Oct.  5,  '04 — "Skip"  spends  heavy  hours  cogitat- 
ing. This  agrees  with  my  temperament — the  bores 
are  always  over-talkative.  We  sit  on  our  kangs 
(Chinese  beds)  half  the  day  reading  and  writing, 
speak  only  an  infrequent  word,  and  yet  feel  I  am  in 
cheerful  yet  sedative  companionship.  Although 
gloomy  of  manner,  his  monosyllabic  utterances  are 
always  given  with  a  pleasant  chuckle  and  shake  of 
the  shoulders — as  if  suppressing  inward  jollity. 
Acts  like  a  triturated  extract  of  Gloucester  ship- 


MANCHURIA  115 

captain,  Arizona  cowboy  and  modern  incarnation  of 
Dionj^sius,  his  face  ancient  Greek  from  close-cropped 
hair  to  straight  nose  and  well-rounded  chin.  Days 
when  the  smi  is  strong  we  go  out  in  the  compound  in 
a  corner  sheltered  from  the  wind — in  the  noon  hour — 
and  bathe.  When  he  stands  in  the  sun  against  the 
mud  wall  of  the  compound  pouring  a  bucket  of  water 
held  high  above  his  head  he  might  be  a  fragment 
from  a  temple  frieze. 

"  'He  writes,  when  he  wants  to,  most  delicate 
prose.  He's  more  fluent  with  pen  than  with  tongue. 
JMornings  on  the  Pacific  voyage  he  would  read — 
Lynch's  "Door  of  the  Civilizations,"  Brownell's 
"Heart  of  Japan,"  Capt.  ^lahan's  "Lessons  of  the 
War  with  Spain"  (Scull  had  enlisted  with  the  Rough 
Riders  at  Tampa  in  that  war  and  I  had  gone  as 
Evening  Post  correspondent  with  the  navy  to  the 
Battle  of  Santiago),  and  Beveridge's  "Russian  Ad- 
vance," and  an  hour  before  tiffin  some  of  us  would 
play  shuffleboard  for  exercise,  which  Scull  would  not 
join,  preferring  inactivity.  Afternoons  he  would 
usually  bring  up  his  banjo  and  chant  Kipling's 

"  'Gentlemen  rankers,  out  for  a  spree, 

"Doomed  from  here  to  eternity' 

"Or  else 

"  'Wrap  me  up  in  my  tarpaulin  jacket  and  say  a 

poor  duffer  lies  low: 
"Get  six  jolly  seamen  to  carry  me  with  steps  that 

are  mournful  and  slow 


«  < 


116  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

*'Then  get  six  breezy  foretopmen  and  let  them  a 

rollicking  go. 
"Let  them  drink  down  a  six  gallon  measure  to  the 
health  of  the  Duffer  below/ 
And  especially: 

And  somehow  you're  sick  of  the  highway,  with 
its  noise  and  its  easy  needs, 
"And  you  seek  the  risk  of  the  byway,  and  you 
reck  not  where  it  leads.'  " 

"It  led  us,  on  arrival  in  Japan,  to  a  sort  of  incar- 
ceration in  the  Hotel  Imperial  at  Tokio  for  six 
months.  For  the  Japanese  were  rather  distrustful 
of  having  men  of  white  race  with  their  armies  in  the 
field,  and  it  was  not  ethical  for  correspondents  to  cross 
from  Japanese  territory  into  the  territory  and  army 
of  the  Russians.  The  long  wait  for  passes  to  the 
front,  and  the  miasmic  airs  from  the  smelly  canal 
which  flows  by  its  walls,  irritated  the  nerves  of  most 
of  us  and  caused  social  distempers  not  wholesome 
for  our  opinion  of  the  Japanese;  but  I  do  not  recall 
that  Scull  ever  lost  patience  or  gave  way  to  com- 
plaint. He  and  Dunn  and  I  took  our  meals  at  the 
same  table  in  a  comer  of  the  dining-room,  and  Scull 
there  as  in  other  places  acted  as  a  grateful  tran- 
quilizer to  our  more  ebullient  fractiousness  at  War 
Office  delays  in  giving  us  the  right  to  go  to  where  the 
war  was.  The  only  time  he  protested  against  the 
round  of  Geisha  dances,  cherry  festivals.  Emperor's 
garden  parties,  etc.,  with  v/hich  the  War  Office  sought 


MANCHURIA  117 

to  soothe  the  general  rancor,  was  at  the  China  Pony 
Races  at  Yokohama.  The  club  grounds  were  gay 
with  the  newest  European  costumes  of  the  Diplo- 
matic colony  and  the  'champagne-openings'  by  the 
owner  of  the  winner  of  each  race.  Coming  away  from 
toastings  to  the  last  successful  owner,  Scull  took  me 
broodily  by  the  arm: 

"  'Old  man,  what  are  we  doing  here?  We  don't 
belong.    Our  business  is  at  the  Front.' 

"He  thought  the  only  way  to  get  there  was  to  sit 
tight  and  play  the  game.  Dunn  and  I  sought  to 
'hustle  the  East'  and  rushed  off  impetuously  to 
Korea.  At  Seoul  we  met  Jack  London,  who  assured 
us  it  was  impossible  to  reach  the  Yalu  battle  front,  as 
he  had  just  been  turned  back,  after  a  run-in  with 
Japanese  officers  for  having  defended  a  Russian  pris- 
oner of  war  from  the  cruelties  of  his  Japanese  guard. 
London  made  an  impassioned  speech  about  it  and 
other  Japanese  actions  in  Korea,  and  we  who  were 
dining  with  him — Willard  Straight,  (A.P.),  Dunn 
and  myself — having  witnessed  the  upsetting  of  the 
native  ancient  djmasty,  applauded  the  speaker  and 
half-gaily  and  half-seriously  declared  we  would  stand 
with  him  in  behalf  of  'Pyngyang  for  the  Pyngyany- 
gans.' 

"Presently  we  were  back  again  with  Scull  at  the 
same  old  hotel  table — finding  him  gone  a  little  more 
bored  with  the  monotony  of  Tokio.  But  he  bright- 
ened at  our  fresh  stories  of  doings  in  Chinnampo. 
Seoul  and  Pyngyang — the  comic  opera  phases  of  the 


118  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

popular  and  court  life,  the  council's  reduction  of  the 
harem  of  the  Emperor  from  80  to  20  wives,  and  so 
on,  rising  to  serious  narrative  as  we  came  to  relate 
the  tragic  episodes  of  the  Japanese  gradual  seizure 
of  the  country  and  of  the  Imperial  family. 

"In  the  billiard  room  Scull  got  us  to  repeat.  Soon 
the  correspondents  grew  so  interested  in  the  light  and 
dark  aspects  of  the  Korean  case  that  Davis  gave  a 
dinner  to  the  Americans  of  the  group  and  others 
visiting  Tokio,  and  as  favors  bestowed  on  each  a  dec- 
oration. It  was  in  the  regulation  form  of  a  military 
decoration,  the  riband  Korean  colors,  and  the  medal 
bearing  the  Korean  symbol  on  one  side  and  the  words 
'Pjmgyang  for  the  Pyngyanygans'  on  the  other. 
Thus,  Scull  and  all  who  were  the  guests  of  Davis 
that  night  and  received  his  decoration  became 
Pyngyanygans  by  that  token. 

"The  time  for  going  to  the  Front  was  approaching 
however,  and  Scull  bought  a  wild-eyed,  volcanic, 
rangy  black  Japanese  stallion  and  I  the  China  pony 
Pit-a-Pat  which  had  won  the  cup  smartly  at  the  races 
that  day.  We  quartered  them  in  the  hotel  sta- 
bles, and  after  Scull  found  a  Wild  West  saddle  and 
I  an  English  saddle,  we  were  ready — for  we  did  not 
accoutre  ourselves  with  so  much  impedimenta,  use- 
ful or  decorative,  as  the  others.  By  July  we  were 
on  our  way, 

"Dunn,  we  parted  with  with  immense  regret.  He 
had,  one  day,  taken  Scull's  stallion — named  Fuji, 
after  the  volcano — out  to  exercise.    Galloping  home 


MANCHURIA  119 

Fuji  slipped  on  turning  in  at  the  hotel  gate  and  Dunn 
was  thereby  laid  up  in  the  hospital  with  a  broken 
ankle." 

Another  man,  describing  the  accident  to  Dunn, 
brings  out  Scull's  presence  of  mind  and  masterful 
way  of  doing  things.    He  says: 

"Guy  was  the  first  to  reach  Dunn  and  the  strug- 
gling pony  and  the  first  to  give  aid  to  the  sufferer. 
It  was  obvious  to  all  of  us  the  break  was  such  that 
unless  properly  handled  Dunn's  foot  would  be  stiff 
for  life.  Dunn  refused  the  aid  of  the  local  Japanese 
doctor.  The  English  surgeon  was  sent  for.  This 
meant  a  long  delay.  Guy,  who  knew  something  of 
bone-setting,  had  pulled  Dunn's  anlde  into  articula- 
tion, and,  with  the  delicate  touch  of  a  woman  com- 
bined with  the  controlled  strength  of  a  man,  he  held 
the  broken  bones  edge  to  edge  for  fully  three  quar- 
ters of  an  hour. 

"When  the  surgeon  arrived  he  was  astonished  at 
what  Guy  had  done  and  announced  that  this  precau- 
tion certainly  saved  Dunn  from  going  through  life 
stiff-footed.  More  besides,  for  with  such  a  break 
complications  might  readily  ensue,  making  necessary 
an  amputation.  Guy's  attention  probably  saved  the 
foot." 

Continuing  from  his  diary  the  shipmate  writes: 

"We  would  miss  this  witty,  bubbling,  good  com- 
rade; but  the  pity  of  it  was  twofold — he  might  never 
again  be  fit  for  his  favorite  sport  of  mountain  climb- 
ing, trudging  over  limitless  Alaskan  tundra,  nor  re- 


120  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

peat  our  ascent  of  Mont  Pele  to  gaze  into  that  thun- 
derous crater  between  eruptions;  and  now  after 
coming  far  and  waiting  long  he  was  incapacitated  for 
'the  Front.' 

"Crossing  the  Yellow  Sea  by  transport  we  were 
landed  at  Dalny,  and  Skipper  and  I  watched  anx- 
iously the  lifting  of  the  horses  from  below  decks. 
Fuji  had  less  of  a  glare  in  his  eye  and  Pit-a-Pat  had 
lost  some  of  his  racing  pep — ^but  the  whole  cavalcade 
was  soon  well  started  north  through  Manchuria  has- 
tening to  catch  up  with  the  Jap  Fourth  Army.  It 
was  some  cavalcade:  eighteen  correspondents  from 
all  over  the  world,  each  with  a  horseboy  and  interpre- 
ter, an  occasional  cook  and  thirty-four  animals  to 
carry  them  and  their  baggage. 

"  'No  wonder,'  said  Scull  grimly,  *no  wonder  the 
Japanese  Army  kept  us  in  Tokio  six  months.  This 
outfit  is  almost  as  big  as  the  Jap  commissariat.' 

"But  on  the  first  day  we  passed  Nantai.  There 
was  strewn  the  wreckage  of  recent  fighting.  This, 
along  with  the  feel  of  a  horse  under  him,  and  the 
pulsing  of  live  blood  after  thirty  miles  of  vigorous 
riding,  stirred  hun  to  further  loquacity  as  we  dis- 
mounted to  camp.  That  is,  he  ejaculated  delightedly, 
arranging  his  saddle  as  a  pillow  on  the  kang  of  a 
mud  hut  where  he  was  to  sleep: 

"'Say!  this  here  is  just  like  picking  strawberries 
with  Genevieve!' 

"  'Maybe,'  I  admitted,  'but  I'm  numb — don't  make 
me  exert  my  imagination.' 


MAXCHIHIA.    I!)()| 


MANCHURIA  121 

"Day  after  day  we  pursued  the  armj'^  which  was  it- 
self pursuing  the  retreating  Russians.  The  sun  beat 
upon  us  from  the  east,  the  zenith,  and  the  west,  like 
the  flame  from  a  blowpipe.  The  eyes  of  the  ponies 
grew  inflamed  and  suppurated  from  the  scorching. 
Then  the  rainy  season  broke,  and  the  mud  was  half  to 
the  ponies'  knees,  and  rivers  we  had  to  cross  were  so 
swollen  that  we  had  to  swim  them  mounted.  One 
such  day,  when  my  short-legged  Pit-a-Pat  could  not 
progress  as  fast  as  Scull's  long-legged  Fuji,  I  sug- 
gested that  Pit-a-Pat  was  no  mud  hen  and  that  he'd 
better  ride  with  Brill  (of  the  A.  P.)  who  also  had 
'paddyfield  wallower.'  Arriving  watersoaked  and 
famished  at  ten  that  night  at  the  temple  where  we 
had  been  billetted.  Scull  met  me  with  a  tincup  of 
Scotch.  By  the  shake  of  his  shoulders,  I  could  tell 
he  was  having  one  of  his  inward  laughs. 

"  'Already;  shoot:    This  is  like ' 

"  'No,'  said  he.  'I  was  riding  with  Brill,  and  he 
said  something  you'll  enjoy.  That  London  Tele- 
graph man  Lynch,  defending  English  newspapers, 
had  remarked  that  "London  publishes  no  newspapers 
on  Sunday."  Brill  asked  him:  'Why  specify  Sun- 
day?'  " 

"At  last  catching  up  with  the  rear  of  the  Fourth 
Division  we  were  held  in  camp  in  a  compound  at 
Haicheng  to  await  the  development  of  an  attack  on 
the  outlying  forts  of  Liaoyang.  Evenings,  all  the 
correspondents  lingered  at  the  mess-table  and  yarned. 
Davis  (Richard  Harding,  then  writing  for  Collier's) 


122  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

asked:  *Guy,  why  didn't  you  bring  the  banjo 
along?'  'Too  many  tin  cans  tied  to  this  bunch  as  it 
was,'  Scull  answered, — for  some  had  brought  elab- 
orate regalia;  pistols,  silk  underwear,  kitchen  hard- 
ware, cameras,  rubber  bathtubs,  medals,  uniforms, 
field-glasses,  sabretaches,  etc. 

"Davis  laughed  and  told  Scull  this  story  on  himself. 

"  *At  college  I  put  "Danny  Dever"  to  music  and 
I  wanted  to  hear  what  your  version  of  it  was.  That 
music  was  published.  Later  I  alleged  that  Walter 
Damrosch  had  lifted  it.  At  the  Authors'  or  Aldine 
club  one  night  I  was  asked  to  prove  it  by  playing 
my  version.  Now  I  don't  play  the  piano.  I  had 
picked  out  and  composed  a  tune  for  "Danny  Dever" 
on  a  Steinway,  and  learned  which  keys  to  strike  by 
their  position  under  the  lettering.  When  I  sat  down 
to  this  piano  I  couldn't  even  start  to  prove  my  case — 
the  piano  was  a  Chickering!' 

"From  my  diary: 

"'Haicheng,  Manchuria,  Aug.  20-04.  Gen.  Oku 
sent  us  eight  bottles  of  champagne  captured  from  the 
Russians.  Scull  and  I  were  given  one  bottle  as  our 
share.  As  he  was  on  the  waterwagon  I  had  to  wait. 
Prior  (London  Illustrated  News)  fell  sick,  and  Scull 
suggested  that  Prior  could  have  his  share  and  I  could 
open  the  bottle — the  others  had  already  consumed 
theirs.  Prior  was  afraid  to  take  champagne  that  day, 
so  the  bottle  had  lain  under  my  bunk  for  over  a  week. 
"Why  don't  you  open  it  yourself?    It'll  be  stolen  if 


MANCHURIA  123 

you  don't.  I'm  going  to  stick  on  this  watenvagon." 
"'Fox  (Scribner's),  Davis,  Lynch  and  Scull 
played  bridge  in  our  quarters  last  night.  When  I 
came  in  from  a  visit  to  the  British  Scull  briefly  inti- 
mated that  they  had  asked  him  to  treat.  He  refused 
because  "half  of  it  was  Clarkin's."  They  suo^orested 
that  Scull  authorize  them  to  take  his  share.  "I  told 
them  I  had  offered  it  to  Prior  and  to  you.  Now 
don't  hold  it  for  me  any  longer." 

"  'When  half  asleep  I  heard  a  step  in  the  room, 
and  turned,  to  see  somebody  silently  sneaking  out. 
Smothered  laughter  and  whispers  greeted  whoever  it 
was,  in  the  next  room  and  somebody  said:  "Get  a 
pail  of  cold  water,"  and  other  voices:  "Hasn't  any- 
one a  corkscrew?"  *  *  *  "You  don't  need  a  cork- 
screw you  dub — I  know  how  to  work  it  out."  But 
Lynch  broke  the  cork  off  in  his  efforts,  and  the  de- 
cision was  to  let  the  bottle  stay  in  the  cool  water  till 
just  before  tiffin  today.  "Skipper,"  I  observed  in  the 
morning,  "our  champagne  was  looted  last  night,  but 
I'll  recapture  it." 

"  Capt.  James  (London  Times)  scouted  for  us  in 
the  suspected  quarters,  and  reported  the  location  of 
the  loot.  Then  we  filled  an  empty  bottle  with  pure 
water,  arranged  the  cork  and  tinfoil,  and  the  captain 
slipped  this  into  the  pail,  and  over  the  backyard  wall 
handed  the  real  champagne  to  Whiting  (London 
Graphic)  and  myself. 

"  'At  11  Davis  and  Fox  came  down  from  a  hill 
where  they  had  been  writing   in   the   shade,    called 


124  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

Lynch,  Brill  and  Lewis.  Scull  and  the  rest  went  out 
where  they  could  see  the  convivial  ceremony  through 
the  open  window.  Davis  cut  the  cork  out  with  a  laiif  e, 
and  filled  Fox's  camp  cup,  then  his  own,  waved  the 
cups  out  the  window  and  shouted — "Scull,  here's 
'how'  to  you  and  Clarkin !" 

"  *A  moment  after  Davis  exclaimed:  "Why,  it's 
water!" 

"  'Scull  was  doubled  up  with  the  violence  of  his 
internal  merriment.  James  couldn't  control  himself 
and  called:  'It's  a  great  success.'  And,  at  the  signal 
the  rest  of  us  made  way  with  the  last  actual  bottle 
of  champagne  this  side  of  the  Russian  battle  line — 
except  Scull,  who  clung  fast  to  his  wagon. 

"  'At  tiffin  our  end  of  the  table  was  merry  and  the 
other  glowering.  "Let's  pretend,"  said  Davis,  "that 
Scull  and  Clarkin  are  absent  and  their  places  empty." 
"Empty  places  at  this  end,"  was  the  retort,  "but 
empty  persons  at  the  other!" 

"  'Well,'  explained  Davis,  'Scull  as  much  as  said 
he  didn't  care  who  had  his  share,  and  we  figured  that 
his  share  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  bottle,  and  that  to 
get  it  we  must  first  drink  off  Clarkin's  share  from 
the  top.'  " 

"By  the  middle  of  September  our  cavalcade  had 
been  permitted  to  reach  a  view  of  the  action  proceed- 
ing for  the  capture  of  the  heights  before  Liaoyang. 
It  was  a  distant  view,  and  needed  strong  glasses.  If 
that  was  as  near  as  we  were  to  get  to  the  battle  line 
our  reports  would  lack  color.    All  day  Scull  and  I 


MANCHURIA  125 

sat  on  a  hill  that  overlooked  the  theatre  of  battle  and 
did  the  best  we  could.  After  a  few  days  twelve  of 
the  correspondents,  including  Davis  and  Fox,  dis- 
gustedly started  for  home. 

"Not  one  hour  after  they  had  disappeared  do^vn 
the  trail,  an  officer  from  headquarters  arrived.  'Now 
that  there  are  not  so  many  of  you,'  he  said,  'Gen. 
Oku  sends  me  to  say  that  you  may  go  as  far  into  the 
lines  as  you  wish,  anj^vhere  you  want  to,  but  advises 
for  your  o^vn  protection  that  you  take  a  Japanese 
officer  with  you  in  order  to  explain  your  presence  to 
the  soldiers.' 

"Scull  remarked  in  elation:  'Well,  it  pays  to  stick 
to  your  course.'  From  then  on  there  was  no  limit 
to  our  enterprise  except  the  rule  that  a  dead  corres- 
pondent is  not  so  useful  to  his  home  office  as  a  live  one. 

"Not  knowing  of  the  sudden  change  of  policy  on 
the  part  of  headquarters,  once  the  corps  of  corres- 
pondents had  been  reduced  to  wieldy  dimensions,  the 
homegoing  twelve  spread  the  report  that  they  were 
returning  because  the  Japs  would  not  let  them  get 
to  the  Front.  Nevertheless  those  who  stayed  went 
under  fire  in  the  battles  of  the  Heights  of  Liaoyang, 
Shiliho,  Sha  ho  and  INIukden,  quite  as  we  listed — 
Scull,  Wliiting  (London  Graphic),  Pratt  (Sydney 
Bulletin),  Brill  (A.  P.),  Laguerrie  (Paris  Petit 
Journal),  Barzini  (Courrier  della  Milano),  and  I 
(N.  Y.  Evening  Post). 

"Between  actions  there  would  be  many  days  of 
waiting.    These  were  severe  for  Scull.    He  moped  on 


126  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

his  cot  in  a  dark  blue  atmosphere;  but  I  understood 
by  this  time  that  he  was  grimly  enduring  a  physical 
depression.  He  had  promised  himself  and  others  that 
he  would  take  no  alcohol  on  duty,  but  he  carried  this 
self-deprivation  to  such  precision  that  he  would  not 
touch  it  even  when  wet  and  exhausted  from  long  ex- 
posure. His  body  weakened  in  resistance,  and  the 
unclean  water  gave  him  dysentery.  But  he  main- 
tained his  attitude  even  in  his  growing  sickness, 
stoically.  When  call  came  to  mount  and  go  out  to 
the  battle-line,  he  would  revive — for  the  sense  of 
danger  lightened  his  plagued  spirits. 

"In  his  correspondence  to  the  New  York  Globe 
Scull  kept  closely  to  the  military  aspects  of  develop- 
ments, and  repressed  the  element  of  personal  adven- 
ture and  difficulty.  But  I  have  vivid  memories  of 
our  watching  all  one  night  from  a  shell  hole  in  a  millet 
field  the  Indian-like  creeping  of  the  Japanese  up  the 
heights  of  Liaoyang ;  of  the  storming  of  the  city ;  of 
our  joining  the  charge  to  the  gate  and  entering  the 
city  with  the  second  line  of  infantry,  encountering 
the  slaughter  going  on  in  the  streets  while  the  advance 
chased  the  Russians  to  Sha  ho;  visits  together  to 
front  line  covered  trenches  where  the  Japs  and  Rus- 
sians regularly  left  off  hostilities  for  tiffin  and  dinner ; 
his  impatience  at  the  delay  of  beginning  the  battle 
of  Mukden,  and  hiking  off  with  Whiting  for  a  week 
to  see  if  Kuroki's  Third  Army  across  the  mountains 
offered  excitement:  all  those  rousing  'risks  of  the 
by-way'  which  he  liked  being  in   the   midst   of.      I 


MANCHURIA  127 

gather  from  my  diary  that  he  missed  the  first  of  the 
Shi-h-li  river  battle: 

"  'Shiliha,  Oct.  11 — First  day  we  have  been  in  the 
middle  of  a  battle  and  seen  it  as  we  wished  to,  going 
where  we  would  if  accompanied  by  Lt.  Okabe.  Scull 
unfortunately  sick  with  dysentery  at  Liaoyang  base 
hospital ;  he  tried  to  come  but  was  so  weak  the  doctor 
put  him  back  to  bed.  Better  he  did  not  come  as  the 
three  of  us  had  nothing  to  stay  us  all  day  but  a  small 
tin  of  sardines." 

"In  November  when  I  was  called  home  he  had  an- 
other attack.  On  the  way  to  Pentai  and  Dalny  I 
stopped  at  hospital  for  a  farewell  to  him,  and  to  take 
any  mail  he  had  ready.  He  couldn't  rise,  and  was 
rather  wistful,  but  determined  to  wait  for  the  taking 
of  Mukden,  the  climax  of  the  campaign.  Pratt  and 
Brill  and  Whiting  were  still  left  to  keep  a  care  over 
him — and  Pratt  and  Okabe  went  along  with  me  to  the 
station.  There  I  made  believe  repack  some  luggage 
till  the  train  came,  so  they  would  not  see  how  moved 
I  felt  at  pulling  out." 

Nothing  in  Scull's  letters  approaches  this  descrip- 
tion of  his  adventures  or  his  activities  during  this  cam- 
paign. It  tells  how  ill  he  was  and  how  determined  he 
was  in  his  refusal  to  take  liquor  while  on  his  swear- 
off.  The  Skipper,  in  his  letters  home,  makes  only  a 
passing  allusion  to  his  serious  illness.  He  tells  in 
a  line  that  he  has  a  comfortable  warm  house  for  the 
winter  camp  and  that  he  has  plenty  of  furs  and  warm 
clothing. 


128  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

One  of  the  things  Scull  carefully  preserved  in  his 
papers  is  a  translation  in  his  own  hand  of  the  writing 
of  some  ancient  Chinese  philosopher,  the  same  hav- 
ing been  done  that  winter  with  the  help  of  J.  Okabe, 
the  Japanese  interpreter  with  the  Second  Army  and 
the  man  whom  Clarkin  mentions  as  their  friend. 
This  translation  is  a  melancholy  sort  of  a  thing  and 
is  interesting  because  it  shows  something  of  the  way 
Scull  occupied  his  time  in  that  dreary  camp,  and  the 
mood  of  Scull  which  at  times  ran  in  this  vein. 

"Translation  of  an  article  written  by  the  Chinese 
philosopher  Lee-ta-pai,  who  lived  during  the  To 
dynasty  (about  1200  years  ago?)  when  literature  and 
philosophy  were  most  flourishing  in  China: 

"In  the  prefecture  of  Ku-ho  (?)  of  Josh-yu  (?) 
there  is  a  village  named  Chu-Chin  more  than  a  hun- 
dred li  distant  from  the  capital.  Green  of  mulberry 
and  flax  all  around  the  viilaoe — and  we  can  hear  the 
far-off  noises  of  shuttles  of  weavers,  cattle  and  don- 
keys jumping  about  joyfull}^  and  girls  come  to  the 
well  for  water,  men  go  to  the  mountains  to  cut  wood. 
There  is  little  official  duties  because  the  village  is  so 
far  from  the  capital  and  deep  in  the  mountains.  The 
customs  are  simple  and  good.  Though  there  is 
money,  there  is  no  commerce.  There  are  many 
young  men  but  they  do  not  go  to  war.  Every  fam- 
ily sticks  to  its  own  village  like  a  profession,  hardly 
ever  going  out  of  the  gates  though  their  heads  be- 
come white.  Born  as  a  villager  of  Chu-Chin ;  where 
dead  turns  to  the  dust  of  the  village.    Old  and  young 


MANCHURIA  129 

meeting  together  enjoj^'  themselves  in  the  fields  and 

pass  the  happy  days. 

"In  the  village  there  are  only  two  families,  Chu 

and  Chin.  Ages  after  ages  intermarriages  take  place 
among  them.  Relatives  near  and  distant,  people 
young  and  old  have  their  own  groups,  and  having 
chickens  and  home-made  wine  they  meet  together 
once  in  every  week  and  enjoy  themselves.  Living 
not  far  separated,  marriages  are  always  concluded 
among  neighbors.  The  dead  are  not  buried  far  away. 
The  churchyard  is  alwaj'-s  near  this  village.  Thus 
they  enjoy  life  and  are  not  troubled  by  death.  Body 
and  spirit  are  at  rest.  The  villagers  therefore  have 
long  lives.  It  is  generally  they  that  have  great 
grandchildren. 

"But  alas  for  me.  Born  in  a  town  where  morality 
is  much  talked  about,  being  an  orphan  and  poor,  and 
understanding  what  is  right  and  what  wrong  by  study 
have  made  me  a  m^an  of  sorrow.  Social  etiquette  com- 
pelled me  to  conform  to  the  teachings  of  the  sages 
and  the  standard  of  a  gentleman  burdened  me  with 
many  ceremonies.  This  made  me  like  a  prisoner  and 
I  became  a  greatly  mistaken  man.  At  ten  years  of 
age  I  understood  to  read.  At  fifteen  I  wrote  well. 
At  twenty  I  became  a  shusai;  at  thirty  a  kanshin. 
Thus  I  must  answer  to  the  masters  grace  above  and 
support  my  family  below.  Cares  of  the  family  and 
responsibility  for  the  state  rest  upon  this  unworthy 
man.  Ah!  when  I  look  back.  It  is  fifteen  years  since 
I  left  my  home  to  travel,  during  which  thrice  I  went 


130  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

to  So  by  lonely  boat  and  four  times  passed  Chin  on 
a  tired  horse.  Traveling  by  day  I  suffered  from  hun- 
ger, sleeping  at  night  scarcely  had  I  rest.  Wander- 
ing east  and  west,  going  and  coming  like  a  floating 
cloud,  hardly  settled  anywhere.  By  civil  war  and 
troubles  I  have  lost  my  native  town.  My  relatives 
are  mostly  scattered.  Some  went  to  the  south  of  Ho, 
whilst  others  went  to  the  north  of  Ho.  These  are 
separated  always,  and  if  some  of  them  are  dead  the 
report  comes  to  me  after  years.  Filled  with  sorrow 
and  troubles  from  morning  until  evening,  I  sit  cry- 
ing until  the  dawn.  Fire  of  sorrow  burns  my  ears; 
frost  of  sadness  embaths  my  hair.  Is  this  life?  Yes, 
it  is  my  life.  Oh!  I  cannot  help  but  envy  the  vil- 
lagers of  Chu-Chin." 

A  shusai  means  one  who  has  passed  a  certain  offi- 
cial examination. 

A  kanshin  is  a  kind  of  counselor  to  the  Emperor. 

So  and  Chin  are  countries  (or  districts)  of  China. 


From  Winter  quarters  Scull  came  down  through 
the  Lioayang  Peninsula  to  Port  Arthur  and  although 
planning  to  go  on  east  by  way  of  Manila  he  changed 
his  mind  at  the  last  minute  and  started  back  home, 
writing  his  Mother  about  April  13,  1905,  that  he 
was  coming  by  way  of  Yokohama. 


Chapter  X 
RUSSIA— 1906 

Little  is  kno^vn  of  Scull's  personal  adventures  in 
Russia.  He  mixed  with  all  classes,  he  made  friends 
with  all  factions.  He  talked  with  Revolutionary 
leaders,  eluding  the  Secret  Service  to  do  it,  and  some 
of  his  experiences  had  enough  heart  throbs  to  make 
the  most  thrilling  of  narratives.  This  we  know  from 
yarns  he  spun  when  he  was  in  the  mood.  But  he  left 
no  account  of  them  or  any  letters  concerning  them, 
perhaps  for  the  very  good  reason  that  in  Russia,  then 
as  now,  it  was  wise  to  leave  no  evidence  of  anything 
one  did  except  that  demanded  by  the  police. 

Manuscripts  sent  home  to  his  mother  and  preserved 
by  her,  dwell  on  the  religious  and  political  life  of 
the  people  and  from  these  carefully  written  sheets 
we  get  the  serious  side  of  Scull  and  his  intense  in- 
terest in  such  subjects  as  they  applied  to  a  people 
already  on  the  verge  of  that  great  struggle  which,  not 
many  years  later,  was  to  topple  an  ancient  empire  into 
one  of  the  bloodiest  revolutions  in  history.  These  let- 
ters written  for  publication  but  never  printed,  show 
an  entirely  different  Scull  from  any  we  have  seen  so 
far.  Here  he  is  a  scholar  setting  down,  brief  as  they 
are  valuable,  contributions  to  history. 

iSl 


132  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Scull  arrived  in  St.  Petersburg  on  April  15,  1906. 
It  does  not  appear  how  he  went  or  why.  From  his 
first  letter  to  his  mother  it  is  evident  that  he  expected 
to  witness  some  sort  of  an  outbreak,  but  in  this  he 
was  disappointed.  Once  more  he  was  ahead  of  the 
times.  So  he  writes  of  the  people  in  a  letter  of 
April  15th: 

"Their  religious  belief  is  something  far  above  these 
matters  of  the  present  day  concerning  the  internal 
conditions  of  the  country.  The  election  of  the  peo- 
ple's representatives,  the  many  victories  of  the  Con- 
stitutional Democrats,  the  agrarian  question,  the 
foreign  loan,  the  resignation  of  Count  Witte,  the  ap- 
proaching Duma  and  all  that  is  hoped  and  feared 
from  the  commencement  of  the  new  era  in  Russia, 
these  questions  of  the  nation,  whatever  magnitude 
they  may  have  previously  assumed,  have  been  rele- 
gated to  a  position  of  second  place  importance  dur- 
ing the  religious  rites  of  the  past  ten  days. 

"Holy  week  in  St.  Petersburg  is  rigorously  ob- 
served. None  of  the  theatres  are  open,  music  is  not 
allowed  in  the  restaurants,  and  the  general  business 
in  the  city  is  carried  on  as  if  under  a  semi-suppres- 
sion. This  state  of  affairs  continues  until  the  Satur- 
day before  Easter,  when  the  flower  stores,  butcher 
shops,  and  the  candy  and  pastry  stores  commence  to 
do  a  thriving  trade.  All  throughout  that  Saturday 
afternoon  you  will  see  various  kinds  of  plants  being 
carried  through  the  streets  as  presents  from  one 
friend  to  another,  and  also  people  carrying  trays  of 


RUSSIA  133 

food  to  have  it  blest  at  the  different  churches  in  order 
that  they  may  be  prepared  to  break  their  fast  when 
the  bells  of  the  cathedrals  ring  at  midnight.  *  *  * 

"But  it  is  the  midnight  service,  the  finale  of  all  the 
ceremonies,  which  better  than  anything  else  gives  a 
true  impression  of  the  strength  of  this  religion.  *  *  * 

"At  the  time  when  the  ceremonies  actually  began 
at  a  little  before  the  midnight  hour  the  interior  of  the 
cathedral  was  crowded  with  people,  literally  shoulder 
to  shoulder,  so  that  there  was  scarcely  room  enough 
for  them  to  lift  their  hands  to  cross  their  brows  and 
breasts.  And  many  classes  of  people  were  to  be 
found  there ;  officers  of  both  the  army  and  the  navy, 
with  the  stars  on  their  shoulder-straps  glistening  in 
the  flickering  light,  women  of  gentle  birth  in  high- 
necked  evening  gowns,  and  generally  carrying  bou- 
quets of  flowers,  peasants  with  full  beards  and  faces 
full  of  wrinkles,  children  of  the  lower  classes  in  their 
Sunday  clothes.  Some  of  the  women  were  seated. 
A  number  of  ladies  of  eminent  rank  had  been  given 
chairs  on  one  side  of  the  centre  aisle,  whilst  on  the  other 
and  a  little  further  down  the  church  three  old  peasant 
women  had  found  a  resting-place  on  the  steps  which 
led  up  to  the  pulpit.  But  the  rest  of  the  vast  throng 
were  standing — standing  and  waiting  in  silence. 

"When  finally  the  procession  moved  down  the 
church  after  the  opening  hj^mns  had  been  sung,  there 
was  a  movement  in  the  crowd  toward  the  centre  aisle 
and  all  the  eyes  followed  the  procession.  In  the  faces 
of  the  people  there  was  written  deep  sincerity  of  feel- 


134.  GUY   HAMILTON   SCULL 

ing,  and  childlike  wonder  and  interest,  and  faith  with- 
out doubt  or  question.  The  bishops'  robes  of  silver 
and  gold,  the  insignias  carried  on  high,  the  incense 
slowly  swinging,  all  these  combined  with  the  faintly 
lighted  church  full  of  varying,  shifting  shadows,  and 
great  columns  of  stone  from  which  wide  arches 
sprung  across  above  in  the  gloom,  and  enormous, 
beautiful  paintings  dimly  seen — all  these  by  reason  of 
race  and  creed  appealed  strongly  to  the  imagination 
of  the  throng.  And  then,  too,  the  mission  with  which 
this  procession  had  set  forth  upon  its  journey.  They 
were  searching  for  the  body  of  Christ  which  had  dis- 
appeared. The  eyes  of  all  the  people  continued  to 
follow  the  procession  until  it  passed  from  their  view 
through  the  doors  of  the  church  and  out  into  the 
night  beyond,  and  again  on  the  square  was  another 
great  crowd  of  people  who  could  not  find  entrance 
within. 

"For  a  time  they  remained  as  they  were,  always 
standing,  always  gazing  in  the  one  direction,  always 
waiting  for  the  return  of  the  searchers.  Nearly  half 
an  hour  thus  elapsed  before  there  was  a  sign  that  the 
procession  was  once  more  approaching.  At  the  fur- 
ther end  of  the  church  there  occurred  one  of  those 
movements  in  the  throng  which  takes  place  in  any 
crowd  when  it  is  swayed  by  a  common  interest  of 
great  importance.  Then  the  procession  itself  was 
seen  approaching.  The  quest  of  the  bishops  had  been 
unsuccessful  yet  their  progress  up  the  aisle  was  fol- 
lowed eagerly  by  the  people  as  before.    On  reaching 


RUSSIA  135 

the  place  from  which  it  started  at  the  head  of  the 
church,  the  announcement  was  made  that  Christ  had 
risen  from  the  dead.  It  was  then  that  all  the  lights 
blazed  up  on  every  side  dispelling  the  gloom  and  the 
shadows,  and  everyone  lighted  wax  tapers  and  held 
them  high  in  their  hands,  and  the  bells  of  the  city  be- 
gan to  ring  through  the  still  cold  air.  It  is  little 
wonder  that  the  love  of  the  dramatic  with  which  these 
people  are  imbued  at  birth  was  stirred  to  the  utmost 
by  this  scene  and  presentation.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
throng  of  people  believed  with  the  faith  of  children, 
which,  excepting  the  faith  of  the  fanatic,  is  the 
strongest  faith  in  the  world. 

"From  striving  for  an  improvement  in  the  condi- 
tion of  national  affairs  the  people  turn  to  the  worship 
of  their  faith  as  they  have  worshipped  for  untold  ages. 
Yet  although  this  stands  apart  from  the  present  crisis 
of  the  day,  the  power  of  this  faith  is  a  living  factor  in 
the  land,  and  in  any  estimate  formed  of  the  existing 
state  of  affairs  it  should  be  given  its  due  considera- 
tion." 

Again  Scull  writes  on  May  1st:  "The  Russians  in 
St.  Petersburg  are  far  from  being  barbarians.  They 
might  be  described  as  substantial  in  body  as  well  as 
mind.  They  are  fond  of  gaiety  and  they  are  fond  of 
music.  The  government  subsidizes  both  the  ballet 
and  the  opera.  But  at  times  their  gaiety  appears 
to  be  a  trifle  forced  and  in  their  music  will  be  found 
a  strong  tendency  toward  the  sadness  of  the  minor 
key." 


136  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

What  Scull  refers  to  as  "the  remarkable  frequency 
with  which  custom  demands  the  passing  of  a  coin  to 
the  expectant  hand,"  comes  in  for  his  comment.    "It 
is  decidedly  unusual,"  writes  he.    "As  an  example  of 
this,  follow  the  regular  method  of  procedure  encum- 
bent upon  the  guest  at  one  of  the  larger  restaurants 
of  the  city.     Having  finished  his  dinner  he  tips  the 
waiter  as  a  matter  of  course.    There  is  nothing  out  of 
the  way  in  this.    But  in  the  antechamber  one  liveried 
attendant  brings  him  his  overcoat  from  one  peg  and 
another  brings  him  his  hat  from  another  peg.     Both 
of  these  expect  a  'little  something.'    Then  at  the  main 
entrance  stand  two  or  three  other  attendants  in  a  dif- 
ferent kind  and  more  gorgeous  livery.    The  chief  of 
these  opens  the  door  with  one  hand  and  holds  out  the 
other  without  pretense  of  any  sort.    His  assistant  ac- 
companies the  guest  across  the  sidewalk  to  the  carriage 
with  much  bowing  and  lifting  of  the  hat  in  order  to 
give  him  a  hand  in  taking  his  seat,  which  on  account 
of  the  low  and  open  build  of  the  vehicle  is  a  feat  about 
as  easily  accomplished  as  that  of  sitting  down  in  a 
chair.    This  last  one  of  the  faithful  retamers  likewise 
receives  a  coin.    And  the  chances  are  about  even  that 
in  addition  to  these  there  is  a  beggar  or  two  laying 
in  wait  in  the  light  from  the  windows  (where  every- 
one can  plainly  see  them  make  their  plea)  in  order 
that  being  thus  placed  in  a  conspicuous  position  the 
guest  may  be  ashamed  to  refuse.    This  is  by  no  means 
an  exaggerated  example  of  the  prevailing  system,  nor 
does  the  system  apply  especially  to  foreigners  as  at 


RUSSIA  137 

first  might  be  readily  supposed ;  it  is  merely  a  recog- 
nized custom  among  the  people." 

In  telling  of  the  men  who  had  been  elected  to  the 
Duma  then  about  to  open,  Scull,  in  a  few  lines  de- 
voted to  each  member,  gives  his  history  in  a  manner 
that  makes  each  man  stand  out  a  sharp  and  distinct 
separate  character.  There  is  not  space  in  this  book 
to  print  them.  Some  sixteen  years  have  elapsed 
since  then.  Many  of  these  men  are  now  dead, 
some  executed  by  the  government  or  by  the  revolu- 
tionists and  some  no  doubt  now  in  power  in  the  Soviet 
government.  All  of  them  were  then  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, probably  many  of  them  guests  of  the  same  hotel 
where  Scull  lived,  waiting  for  this  first  constituted 
representative  body  of  Russians  to  assemble. 

Following  his  description  of  the  scholars  and  scien- 
tists, Scull  portrays  the  representatives  of  the  peasant 
classes.  He  says  "Of  the  five  hundred  and  fifteen 
members  of  the  Duma  about  two  hundred  are  peas- 
ants. It  is  safe  to  say  that  seventy  per  cent,  of  these 
have  been  educated  only  at  elementary  schools  which 
in  Russia  means  that  they  have  learned  to  read  and 
write  imperfectly  and  nothing  more.  There  are  some 
who  cannot  read  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  one  peas- 
ant member  is  said  to  speak  three  languages  and  an- 
other who  received  his  early  training  in  a  foundling 
hospital  has  now  gained  the  reputation  of  being  one 
of  the  best  educated  men  in  the  Duma. 

"Very  little  indeed  can  be  found  concerning  the 
history  of  these  peasant  members,  but  the  stories  of 


138  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

two  of  them,  both  representatives  from  Archangel, 
are  unusual.  Archangel  is  the  province  in  the  ex- 
treme northern  country  where  in  winter  there  is  no 
sunshine  and  in  summer  there  is  no  night.  Like  Si- 
beria, political  offenders  against  the  government  were 
exiled  to  this  distant  province.  One  representative, 
Mr.  G'Aletsky,  was  arrested  in  1894  on  account  of 
his  revolutionary  leanings  and  was  banished  to  Arch- 
angel where  he  began  to  practice  as  a  lawyer  and  sub- 
sequently obtained  great  renown.  The  other,  a 
peasant  named  Isuloff  was  also  banished  to  that  place 
on  a  political  charge.  This  man  had  never  taken  part 
in  politics.  He  was  in  no  way  guilty  of  the  offense  of 
which  he  was  accused.  But  once  in  Archangel  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  real  revolutionary  exiles 
whose  influence  turned  him  into  a  radical  of  the  most 
advanced  order.  And  now  both  of  these  former  ex- 
iles have  been  elected  by  the  people  of  Archangel  to 
represent  them  in  the  parliament  at  St.  Petersburg." 

Scull  closes  this  list  with  the  story  of  Feodor  Rodit- 
cheff,  a  noble,  fifty  years  of  age,  now  a  leader  of  the 
masses,  who  after  loyal  service  to  the  government, 
was  dismissed  from  his  post  and  later  reprimanded  by 
the  Czar  for  demanding  a  Russian  constitution,  the 
Emperor  in  his  personal  reprimand  characterizing 
Roditcheff's  demands  as  "meaningless  fantasy." 

"Meaningless  fantasy!"  concludes  Scull,  "that  hap- 
pened only  a  little  over  six  years  ago,  and  next  week 
is  the  meeting  of  the  Duma." 

Of  these  men  Scull  writes: 


RUSSIA  139 

"The  manj^  instances  in  the  past  in  which  the  dif- 
ferent representatives  have  suffered  punishment  at 
the  hands  of  the  government  is  truly  remarkable. 
Some  of  them  have  been  sent  to  prison,  others  ban- 
ished into  exile,  others  again  have  been  dismissed 
from  their  posts  of  office,  and  one  or  two  even  have 
been  public^  flogged  for  creating  political  disturb- 
ances. The  natural  prophecy  to  be  deduced  from  this 
fact  is  obvious,  but  any  prophecy  made  in  regard 
to  the  outcome  of  the  Duma  is  likely  to  prove  false 
on  the  very  account  of  the  unusual  assortment  of 
characters  to  be  found  among  its  different  members. 

"It  is  only  within  the  last  two  or  three  daj^s  that 
the  elections  in  all  the  districts  which  will  be  repre- 
sented at  the  opening  session  have  been  concluded. 
Consequently,  for  the  first  time  now  it  is  possible  to 
gain  a  clear  conception  of  the  strangely  mixed  com- 
pany which  will  compose  the  national  parliament  of 
this  country.  And  indeed,  it  is  a  heterogeneous  col- 
lection of  classes,  religions  and  races.  There  are 
princes  and  peasants,  a  major-general  of  the  army 
and  a  shop-keeper's  assistant,  doctors,  lawyers,  fac- 
tory directors  and  professors,  well  knovm  authorities 
on  history,  political  economy  and  criminal  law  and 
laborers  who  can  neither  read  nor  write. 

"In  the  matter  of  religion  the  majority  of  the 
members  of  course  belong  to  the  Greek  Orthodox 
Church.  But  there  are  representatives  of  the  various 
dissenting  sects  of  that  body  such  as  those  who  are 
known  as  the  Old  Believers.     And    also   there   are 


140  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

Lutherans,  Mohammedans,  Roman  Catholics  and 
Jews.  Among  the  different  races  are  Russians, 
Poles,  Ukranians,  Germans,  Hebrews,  Lithuanians, 
Letts,  Ests,  Tartars  and  Siberians.  But  this  is  not 
all.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  will  convene  as  it 
stands  today,  the  Duma  is  not  entirely  complete. 
Some  of  the  districts  of  Siberia,  Central  Asia  and  the 
Caucasus  will  not  hold  their  elections  until  some  as 
yet  undetermined  date  in  the  future.  When  the  re- 
sult from  these  districts  are  announced  the  make-up 
of  the  Duma  will  be  varied  still  further  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  countless  races  of  the  Caucasus, 
which  are  said  to  speak  three  hundred  different 
languages,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  a  delegate  of  the 
Buddhist  persuasion  will  be  found  among  the  other 
religions." 

Of  the  ceremony  of  the  formal  opening  of  the 
Duma  on  May  10,  1906,  Scull  writes  as  follows: 

"On  this  day,  Thursday,  the  Czar  of  Russia 
opened  the  first  session  of  the  Duma.  It  was  the  first 
time  that  the  members  of  the  Duma  had  met  together 
as  a  body ;  never  before  a  ceremony  of  this  kind  had 
been  held  in  the  city  of  St.  Petersburg.  It  was  also 
the  first  time  that  the  Czar  had  appeared  in  public 
since  the  commencement  of  the  recent  troubles.  In 
regard  to  the  reception  he  received  it  may  be  said 
in  conventional  language  that  he  was  welcomed  by 
the  loyal  inhabitants  of  the  capital. 

"The  newspapers  and  the  people  here  are  calling 
this  day  the  birth  of  a  new  era  in  Russia,  but  whether 


RUSSIA  141 

or  not  a  veritable  new  era  is  beginning  remains  with 
the  future  to  decide.  The  revolutionary  movement 
has  commenced  the  work,  it  is  true — a  long  step  for- 
ward has  been  taken — yet  a  vast  deal  more  must  still 
be  accomplished  before  the  end  for  which  the  people 
are  striving  is  finally  reached. 

"And  events  of  considerable  significance  have  fol- 
lowed each  other  in  rapid  succession  within  the  past 
ten  days.  There  was  the  attempted  destruction  of 
Dubarsov,  the  Governor  of  Moscow,  after  church  last 
Sunday  morning,  and  the  subsequent  murder  of  the 
Governor  of  Katrinaslave  when  six  men  shot  him 
down  with  revolvers.  There  was  the  publication  of 
the  Fundamental  Laws  over  which  the  Duma  has  no 
control  and  which  take  away  practically  all  the  power 
which  that  body  had  hoped  to  wield.  There  was  the 
incident  two  nights  ago  at  the  meeting  of  the  Free 
Economic  Society  (the  oldest  political  society  in  Rus- 
sia), when  the  police  turned  the  meeting  out  of  doors 
on  the  plea  that  the  license  was  not  in  order,  and  when 
Roditcheff,  the  champion  of  the  people  and  an  able 
man,  denounced  the  action  to  his  audience  of  Cadets 
as  a  sample  of  the  treatment  which  under  the  present 
conditions  of  affairs  the  Duma  must  expect  from  the 
government.  The  summing  up  of  these  events  and 
others  of  the  kind  would  seem  to  indicate  that  after 
all  no  great  change  has  been  effected  by  the  substitu- 
tion of  the  new  order  for  the  old.  A  large  percentage 
of  the  people  believe  that  the  Duma  will  fail  to  real- 
ize the  ambition  of  the  nation  at  large.    One  of  the 


142  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

radical  newspapers  this  morning  described  the  situa- 
tion in  brief  by  saying  'that  the  day  is  clear  and  fine 
and  it  should  be  a  day  of  rejoicing,  but  it  is  not.' 
Such  as  it  is,  however,  the  Duma  has  been  established. 
The  first  session  has  been  opened  with  all  the  pomp 
and  splendor  of  the  Imperial  Court. 

"The  Emperor  arrived  in  the  Imperial  yacht  this 
morning  from  Peterhoff  where  he  had  spent  the  night 
in  the  palace  at  that  place.  To  lessen  the  chance  of 
accident,  one  end  of  the  pontoon  bridge  over  the 
Neva  was  cast  loose  and  the  bridge  allowed  to  swing 
with  the  tide  lengthwise  along  the  opposite  shore  as  is 
done  when  the  ice  on  the  river  begins  to  break  up  in  the 
spring.  Over  the  permanent  bridges  no  one  was  per- 
mitted to  pass  since  the  dawn.  At  that  hour  also  all 
traffic  was  stopped  through  the  streets  in  the  near 
vicinity  of  the  Winter  Palace  and  police  lines  thrown 
across  them.  Wh<ri  it  was  still  quite  early,  troops 
of  the  Guard  regiments  could  be  seen  moving  in 
every  direction  throughout  the  neighborhood.  In  the 
palace  square,  squadrons  of  cavalry  stood  to  horse. 

"The  ceremony  itself  was  held  in  the  St.  George's 
throne-room  of  the  Winter  Palace.  This  hall  is 
built  of  white  marble  and  decorated  with  gold.  Twin 
columns  of  white  marble  uphold  the  gallery  which 
runs  around  all  four  walls.  Six  massive,  golden  chan- 
deliers are  suspended  from  the  ceiling,  which  is  heav- 
ily beamed  and  painted  white.  The  floor  is  inlaid 
with  intricate,  beautiful  patterns.  The  main  en- 
trance is  situated  at  one  end  of  the   hall    and    the 


RUSSIA  143 

throne  on  the  raised  platform  at  the  other.  On 
either  side  low  tiers  had  been  built  and  covered  with 
dark  red  cloth.  These  were  the  places  for  the  person- 
ages to  stand  who  attended  the  ceremonies.  Thus 
through  the  center  of  the  hall  lay  a  wide,  open  way, 
straight  from  the  entrance  to  the  throne.  The  walls 
on  two  sides  were  pierced  with  a  series  of  plain  glass 
windows  through  which  today  the  morning  sunlight 
entered  freely. 

"At  half-past  twelve  o'clock  a  large  company  of 
men  dressed  in  varied  and  gorgeous  uniforms  began 
straggling  into  the  hall,  without  haste  and  without 
order,  in  such  a  manner  as  gave  evidence  that  all 
this  was  more  or  less  of  a  frequent  occurrence  with 
them.  Several  apparently  had  not  seen  each  other 
for  some  time,  for  now  and  again  two  of  them  would 
stop  to  shake  hands,  or  kiss  each  other  on  the  cheek  or 
stand  chatting  for  a  moment  or  so.  Although  the 
uniforms  were  varied  they  were  very  alike  in  gor- 
geousness.  Gold  braid,  hugh  epaulets  and  rows  of 
decorations  everywhere  prevailed.  These  personages 
were  the  members  of  the  Imperial  Council,  the  Cham- 
berlains, and  the  other  many  officials  of  the  court. 
Their  footfalls  on  the  wooden  floor  sounded  loud  in 
the  great,  empty  hall. 

"When  this  company  had  finally  arranged  itself, 
standing  on  the  low  tiers  at  the  west  side  of  the  pas- 
sage, the  choir  composed  of  boys'  and  men's  voices, 
entered,  and  after  them  came  a  company  of  the  court 
clergy  dressed  entirely  in  gold.     One  of  these  car- 


144  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

ried  a  small  Greek  cross,  another  a  bowl  of  the  Holy 
Water.  Both  the  choir  and  the  clergy  ranged  them- 
selves likewise  on  the  western  side  of  the  hall. 

"Then  the  members  of  the  Duma  arrived.  There 
were  a  vast  number  of  these.  They  moved  into  the  hall 
rapidly,  in  single  file,  which  suggested  at  once  that 
before  they  had  reached  the  door  they  had  been  com- 
pelled to  pass  one  bj^  one  in  front  of  officials  for  the 
purpose  of  identification.  They  took  their  places  on 
the  east  side  of  the  hall,  standing  in  rows  of  three  or 
four  deep  along  the  very  edge  of  the  lowest  tier  until 
they  looked  for  all  the  world  like  a  crowd  of  men 
lining  the  curbstone  of  the  sidewalk  and  'waiting  for 
the  parade  to  pass.'  Only  here,  of  course,  with  the 
exception  of  the  priests  and  the  Mohammedans,  they 
waited  with  uncovered  heads.  A  few  of  them  wore 
the  national  costume  of  the  peasants.  A  Roman 
Catholic  Bishop  wore  a  purple  robe.  There  were 
two  or  three  Orthodox  Priests  with  flowing  hair,  and 
several  men  dressed  in  evening  clothes  and  others 
again  in  some  unpretentious  uniform  denoting  that 
the  owners  were  the  holders  of  minor  offices.  But 
the  great  majority  of  the  throng  on  the  east  side 
were  in  simple,  dark-colored,  every-day  clothes  with 
the  trousers  in  most  cases  tucked  into  top  boots 
which  evidently  had  been  freshly  greased  for  the 
occasion. 

"In  one  or  two  cases  among  the  peasants  the  men 
betrayed  that  they  were  slightly  ill  at  ease  to  find 
themselves  actually  standing  there  in  the  magnificent 


RUSSIA  145 

throne-room  of  the  palace.  Now  and  again  a  peas- 
ant would  move  to  the  side  of  an  acquaintance  for 
the  apparent  reason  of  gaining  the  comfort  of  com- 
panionship in  their  strange  surroundings.  The  great 
mass  of  them,  however,  continued  to  stand  immovable 
in  the  rows  along  the  edge  of  the  lower  tier.  Their 
bearded,  dark  faces  were  slightly  curious  and  un- 
disturbed. Their  deep  blue  eyes  looked  quietly  at 
the  opposite  array  of  gorgeous  uniforms,  decorations 
and  gold  braid.  Thus  for  a  long  while  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people  waited  face  to  face  with  the 
bureaucracy  for  the  Emperor  of  them  all  to  pass 
between  them  to  the  throne. 

"At  ten  minutes  of  two  the  sound  of  a  band  playing 
the  national  anthem  somewhere  outside  of  the  palace 
could  be  faintly  heard,  and  almost  immediately  after- 
wards the  procession  entered  the  hall.  Directly  be- 
hind the  Minister  of  the  Imperial  Court  who  walked 
at  the  head  of  the  parade,  came  the  different  pieces 
of  the  Imperial  regalia.  There  was  the  Seal,  the 
Flag,  the  Sword,  the  Globe,  the  Crown  and  the  Scep- 
tre. Each  one  of  these  was  carried  by  a  man  of  high 
military  or  civil  rank,  and  each  was  guarded  by  two 
officers  with  drawn  swords  and  by  two  infantry  sol- 
diers in  light  marching  order  and  fixed  bayonets. 

"The  Emperor  in  a  simple,  regimental  uniform 
walked  alone.  Behind  him  came  the  two  Empresses 
dressed  in  the  national  costume  of  Russia,  and  be- 
hind these  again  came  a  company  of  Grand  Dukes 
and  their  suites. 


146  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"The  Emperor  nodded  first  to  the  rows  of  peasants 
and  representatives  of  the  people  who  gazed  at  him 
without  reserve.  Then  he  turned  to  the  other  side 
and  nodded  to  the  bureaucracy  who  returned  his 
greeting  with  low  obeisance. 

"The  first  part  of  the  procession  passed  on  to  the 
appointed  places  near  the  throne.  The  Emperor 
stopped  where  the  court  clergy  were  standing.  He 
stooped  and  kissed  the  Cross  and  received  the  sprink- 
ling of  Holy  Water  on  his  forehead.  The  two  Em- 
presses did  the  same  and  then  took  their  stations  on 
either  side  of  the  Emperor. 

"There  followed  a  long,  religious  ceremony.  With 
the  attempted  destruction  of  Dubarsov  and  the  mur- 
der of  the  Governor  of  Katrinaslave  fresh  in  mind, 
in  the  immediate  presence  of  that  sombre  array  of 
people's  representatives  many  of  whom  were  out- 
wardly confessed  to  be  in  sympathy  with  the  revo- 
lutionary movement,  with  the  chanting  of  the  service 
going  on  and  on  apparently  without  an  end,  the  sit- 
uation for  those  three  must  have  been  a  hard  one  to 
bear  with  indifference.  The  Emperor  was  not  so  tall 
as  either  of  the  Empresses.  Although  he  stood  erect, 
his  pose  was  lacking  in  strength.  Under  the  circmii- 
stances  it  was  natural,  perhaps,  that  now  and  again 
he  betrayed  slight  signs  of  nervousness.  Both  the 
Empresses  stood  like  statues. 

"But  when  the  services  ended  and  the  Empresses 
went  forward  and  the  Grand  Dukes  fell  back  so  that 
the  Emperor  walked  along  and  slowly  down  the  cen- 


RUSSIA  147 

tre  of  the  hall  to  the  throne,  the  fine  attempt  at  an 
assumed  impressive  bearing  and  a  seemingly  outward 
calm  called  at  once  for  a  certain  admiration. 

"On  reaching  the  throne,  where  the  royal  robe 
trimmed  with  ermine  lay  across  the  arm  of  the  chair, 
the  Emperor  was  handed  a  paper  whereon  his  speech 
was  written.  The  speech  was  brief.  It  contained 
no  more  than  what  was  to  be  expected  of  the  occa- 
sion. The  Emperor  read  it  with  a  slow,  monotonous, 
distinct  enunciation.  He  spoke  for  a  little  imder 
three  minutes  in  all. 

"At  the  closing  words,  ']\Iay  God  be  a  helper  to 
me  and  to  you,'  the  assemblage  burst  forth  into 
cheering  and  a  band  stationed  in  the  gallery  played 
again  the  national  hymn.  But  the  cheering  was  not 
spontaneous.  It  continued  with  a  dead  level  intens- 
ity which  suggested  immediately  that  only  those  who 
had  been  previously  instructed  did  the  shouting. 
The  procession  reformed  as  before  and  moved  to- 
ward the  main  entrance  of  the  hall.  The  cheering 
lasted  until  the  Emperor  had  passed  out.  Then 
silence  came  abruptly." 


Chapter  XI 
THE  LOSS   OF  THE   MAYFLOWER— 1908 

The  expedition  to  the  Caribbean  in  search  of 
sunken  Spanish  treasure  was  one  of  the  big  adven- 
tures in  Scull's  life,  and  for  that  matter  in  the  life 
of  every  member  of  the  ship's  company.  It  was 
planned  as  a  summer  yachting  cruise  to  the  south'ard 
and  ended  in  the  total  loss  of  the  ship  in  a  West 
Indian  hurricane,  all  hands  being  saved  by  a  passing 
steamer  on  a  third  and  last  attempt  to  get  a  line 
fast  to  the  derelict.  It  was  an  adventure  equaling 
any  sea  yarn  told  of  the  Spanish  Main,  and  no  band 
of  swashbucklers  in  Drake's  and  Frobisher's  days 
ever  faced  death  with  less  thought  or  more  courage 
than  this  crew  of  Harvard  and  Yale  men  of  a  peace- 
ful and  prosaic  time. 

The  Southern  Research  Company,  for  such  was 
the  expedition's  name,  was  organized  in  the  Summer 
of  1908,  but  not  until  September  18th  were  the  ship 
and  crew  completely  outfitted  and  ready  to  sail. 
Scull,  who  had  been  elected  leader,  wrote  his  Mother 
on  August  6th  not  to  worry  about  his  safety. 

"The  boat  we  are  sailing  in,"  the  letter  runs,  "is 
the  Mayflower.  She  is  built  exceedingly  strong  and 
has  already  made  two  trips  to  the  West  Indies.    For 

148 


LOSS    OF   THE    MAYFLOWER      149 

Captain  we  have  a  man  who  has  been  a  deep  sea  skip- 
per for  a  great  many  years  and  knows  these  waters 
like  a  book.  We  will  undoubtedly  take  a  mate  as 
well.  In  regard  to  the  hurricane  season,  that  season 
will  he  nearly  over  by  the  time  we  get  there,  and  an- 
other thing  you  must  remember  the  storms  you  may 
have  up  here  we  will  not  have  in  the  south.  I  tell 
you  this  so  that  every  time  there  is  a  storm  up  here 
you  will  not  think  of  my  being  out  in  it.  I  shall  be 
many  hundred  miles  south  of  the  track  of  that  storm." 

On  September  19th  he  sent  a  last  word  ashore  by 
the  pilot  as  the  jMayflower  was  passing  out  through 
the  Narrows  on  her  way  to  sea. 

"We  hope  to  catch  a  favorable  wind,"  wrote  Scull, 
"and  sail  straight  down  the  coast.  If  any  storm 
blows  up  we  will  not  have  any  difficulty  about  get- 
ting into  a  good  harbor.  We  are  all  in  fine  spirits. 
Will  write  you  as  soon  as  we  get  into  Kingston." 

The  INIayflower  never  reached  Kingston.  The 
story  of  the  cruise,  the  loss  of  the  ship,  and  a  second 
attempt  to  raise  the  treasure  is  best  told  by  a  close 
personal  friend  of  Scull  and  a  member  of  the  ship's 
company.    He  writes  as  follows: 

"Over  my  desk  hangs  a  photograph  that  I  shall 
never  part  with.  The  view  is  from  the  bow  of  a  dis- 
masted schooner  looking  aft.  The  deck  is  scattered 
with  the  debris  of  wreckage,  a  dory  is  lashed  bottom 
up  by  the  main  companionway,  the  port  rail  shows 
to  be  battered  and  broken  in,  a  huge  sea  rises  above 
the  starboard  quarter,  about  the  wheel  stands  a  small 


150  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

group  of  men  in  oilskins,  but  what  catches  the  eye 
most  particularly  is  a  slight,  lean  figure,  with  close 
cropped  hair  and  sunburnt  skin,  clad  in  a  cotton 
shirt  and  long  black  trousers,  clinging  to  the  stump 
of  the  broken  mainmast,  evidently  on  lookout  duty. 
The  wrecked  vessel  is  the  IMayflower,  and  the  look- 
out Guy  Scull. 

"I  like  the  picture  not  only  because  it  recalls  vividly 
to  me  a  few  days  of  stirring  adventure  that  I  enjoy 
in  restrospect  but  because  it  portrays  Guy  Scull  in 
a  situation  that  I  believe  he  enjoyed  above  all  others, 
for  he  was  a  man  with  whom  adventure  was  a  real 
passion  and  a  thing  to  be  pursued  as  carefully  and 
diligently  as  any  profession  or  business  in  life  should 
be  pursued. 

"That  was  thirteen  years  ago  now  and  we  v/ere 
all  young  enough  then  to  be  moved  further  from  the 
fireside  by  a  tale  and  prospect  of  sunken  treasure. 
Scull  and  Boyleston  were  veteran  adventurers,  the 
former  had  been  a  Rough  Rider  and  war  correspon- 
dent in  the  Boer  and  Russo-Japanese  wars  and  the 
latter  had  fought  in  the  Boer  army,  been  severely 
wounded,  captured  by  the  British  and  after  so  many 
daring  attempts  to  escape  that  he  was  considered  by 
them  more  than  a  handful,  had  been  locked  up  in 
Napoleon's  headquarters  at  St.  Helena.  The  rest  of 
our  crowd  behind  the  mast.  Hay  den  Richardson,  Ste- 
phen Noyes  and  myself,  were  gentlemen  with  less 
dramatic  pasts. 

"Scull  was  commander  of  the  expedition   and  a 


LOSS    OF   THE    MAYFLOWER      151 

very  thorough,  capable  commander  he  made.  The 
Mayflovrer  was  officered  by  an  aged  captain,  now 
dead,  a  competent  and  genial  first  mate,  Perham,  for 
whom  life  held  many  vicissitudes  many  of  which  were 
of  a  distinctly  humorous  character  to  me,  at  any 
rate,  and  four  or  five  men  before  the  mast.  About 
three  hundred  miles  east  of  Cape  Canaveral,  Florida, 
and  the  same  distance  north  of  Watling's  Island, 
early  in  October  on  our  way  to  Kingston,  Jamaica, 
we  ran  into  an  unusually  severe  hurricane.  For  the 
first  twelve  hours  we  were  hove  to  under  double  reefed 
foresail  and  fore  staysail  and  made  good  weather  of 
it  until  both  sails,  one  after  the  other,  blew  to  pieces. 
"We  were  then  forced  to  run  under  bare  poles  be- 
fore the  storm  which  had  reached  its  full  intensity. 
As  I  remember  we  ran  about  four  hours,  from  mid- 
night to  daybreak,  the  schooner  rolling  down  on  her 
beam  ends  and  putting  her  spreaders  in  the  seas, 
flying  at  tremendous  rate  of  speed  and  being  almost 
impossible  to  steer.  It  was  about  daybreak  that  the 
rudder  broke  and  she  broached  to  and  put  her  masts 
in  the  water.  I  suppose  the  wind  was  blowing  as 
high  as  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  an  hour 
then. 

"She  was  ballasted  with  pig-iron  and  some  of  this 
rolled  to  leeward,  making  her  less  stable,  and  after  a 
couple  of  severe  knockdowns.  Scull,  who  was  cling- 
ing to  the  weather  rail,  took  command  of  the  ship, 
the  captain  being  too  dazed  and  beaten  by  the  situa- 
tion to  act,  and  ordered  the  masts  cut  out.     It  was 


152  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

undoubtedly  his  prompt  decision  that  saved  us,  for 
before  we  got  the  mainmast  clear,  she  had  put  both 
masts  in  five  times,  and  the  last  time  I  recall  going 
comipletely  under  water  myself;  I  was  at  the  main- 
mast step  helping  the  mate  cut  away,  and  the  last 
thing  I  saw  was  the  mast  head  go  under  and  the 
weather  rail  apparently  tumble  over  on  top  of  me. 

"When  she  righted  it  appeared  that  Scull  and  the 
others  had  been  hanging  clear  of  the  rail  by  their 
hands  with  their  knees  in  the  water,  so  it  can  be  seen 
that  her  decks  had  crossed  the  perpendicular. 

"When  the  mast  finally  went  it  punched  a  hole 
through  the  deck  and  then  blew  out  like  a  toothpick 
to  leeward  for  the  spring  stay  between  it  and  the  fore- 
mast had  not  been  cut.  We  cut  the  fore  rigging  and 
then  in  a  minute  or  so  the  entire  rig  went  to  blazes, 
first  the  bowsprit,  then  the  mainboom  and  gaff  and 
mainsail,  all  furled  together,  jumped  over  the  broken 
mainmast  stump,  crashed  down  on  the  lee  rail,  smash- 
ing it  and  a  dory  to  pieces,  and  finally,  after  we  had 
cut  the  watch  tackles  and  main  sheet,  rolled  over- 
board and  blew  away  over  the  crest  of  a  mountain- 
ous sea  never  to  be  seen  again. 

"We  now  found  ourselves  somewhere  in  the  South 
Atlantic  rudderless,  mastless  and  rigless  save  for  the 
foreboom  and  about  a  third  of  the  storm  trysail. 
Everything  below  decks  was  in  a  frightful  mess.  All 
the  belongings  of  the  men  in  the  starboard  bunks 
of  the  main  cabin  had  tumbled  over  into  the  port 
bunks  when  she  heeled  down  and  on  top  of  them  had 


9 


W^ 


THE  WRECK  OF  THE  M  A^  I- LOW  Kli,  1!)08 


LOSS    OF    THE    MAYFLOWER      153 

rolled  several  tons  of  bilge  water  and  pig-iron 
ballast.  General  devastation  and  mess  was  true  from 
the  forecastle  to  the  lazarette  aft.  I  remember  that 
all  we  had  to  eat  for  the  next  few  days  was  canned 
eggs,  hardtack,  soaked  hi  bilgewater,  and  sardines. 

"We  had  three  tons  of  djmamite  in  the  after  state- 
room which  caused  us  much  anxiety  as  the  Mayflower 
had  a  long,  low  stern  and  pounded  frightfully  in  the 
hea\y  seas.  Partly  because  we  had  feared  the  dyna- 
mite might  be  detonated  and  in  order  to  relieve  the 
strain  on  her  stem,  which  was  beginning  to  break  up, 
we  started  to  throw  the  dynamite  overboard.  The 
first  box  floated  under  her  stern  and  she  came  doAvn 
'whack'  on  top  of  it,  which  gave  us  a  scare,  and  then 
we  decided  to  break  the  boxes  open  so  they  would 
sink  quicker.  Bojdston  took  a  hammer  and  cold 
chisel  and  went  after  the  job  in  true  boilermaker  fash- 
ion, but  Scull  thought  his  technique  faulty  and  took 
the  job  himself,  prying  the  boxes  open  carefully  and 
letting  Boylston  and  the  rest  heave  them  overboard. 

"Saturday  we  sighted  a  steamer,  the  Advance  of 
the  Panama  line,  signalled  her  but  as  we  had  lost 
our  code  book  could  not  read  her  signals.  We 
thought  she  said  she  would  'stand  by.'  As  it  was  very 
rough  and  blowing  a  gale  and  she  was  having  all  she 
could  do  to  weather  it  herself,  we  got  no  assistance 
from  her  and  after  a  while  lost  her  from  view.  That 
night  we  burnt  Coston  lights  and  sent  up  rockets, 
and  about  midnight  picked  up  the  lights  of  a  steamer. 
She  stood  by  and  when  dawn  came  we  made  her  out  as 


154  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  Ran,  a  Norwegian  tramp,  heavily  laden  and  tak- 
ing on  water  like  a  submarine.  She  tried  to  lower  a 
boat  but  smashed  it  up  and  then  towed  a  buoyed  line 
about  us  which  Noyes  finally  got  by  swimming  for  it 
about  noon.  To  this  the  Ran  fastened  a  heavy  haw- 
ser but,  as  we  were  hauling  it  in,  our  line  caught  in 
her  screw  and  parted.  She  then  gave  up  trying  to 
get  us  and  stood  by. 

"About  3  P.  M.,  Sunday,  we  sighted  a  third 
steamer,  the  Hippolite  Dumois  of  the  United  Fruit 
Company,  a  small,  lightly  loaded  steamer,  that  ap- 
peared to  be  making  good  weather  of  it.  Her  cap- 
tain was  able  to  manoeuver  her  readily  and  soon  had 
backed  her  down  on  us  and  cast  a  line  over  our  decks. 
In  no  time  we  had  a  hawser  through  the  bits  and  were 
in  tow.  Then,  by  means  of  a  life  buoy  and  a  snub 
line,  we  were  hauled  over  through  the  water  and  up 
the  stern  to  the  steamer's  deck,  the  Mayflower,  in 
a  sinking  condition,  was  cut  adrift,  and  we  started 
for  Baltimore,  minus  most  of  our  belongings  but  rich 
in  adventure. 

"The  Hippolite's  skipper  offered  us  all  clothing, 
cigars  and  whiskey.  Scull  took  only  the  cigars.  He 
was  on  a  swear-off  and  though  he  was  suffering  from 
fever  and  was  in  a  weakened  condition,  refused  a 
drink  under  circumstances  that  surely  warranted  one, 
and  went  down  to  the  fireroom  in  his  wet  clothes 
and  smoked  the  Captain's  cigars  till  he  dried  off. 

"We  were  landed  at  Baltimore  a  few  days  later 
and  when  we  returned  to  New  York  I  went  down  to 


LOSS    OF    THE    MAYFLOWER      155 

Kingston,  Jamaica,  and  chartered  another  schooner, 
the  Seagull,  to  get  out  to  the  wreck  we  were  after. 
Incidentally  I  caught  fever  and  my  doctor  advised 
my  returning  to  New  York,  which  I  did,  passing 
Scull,  Boylston  and  the  mate  who  sailed  for  King- 
ston about  the  same  time  I  sailed  for  New  York. 
Thej^  took  the  Seagull  out  to  the  reef  and  after  a 
few  days  my  desire  to  see  the  thing  through  moved  me 
back  to  Kingston  where  I  got  a  trader  from  the  Cay- 
man Islands  to  take  me  out  to  the  reef. 

"This  was  a  fortunate  move  for  when  we  reached 
Pedro  Banks  and  sighted  the  Seagull  I  found  that 
the  treasure  hunt  had  not  gone  as  well  as  anticipated. 
Scull  and  Boylston  put  out  to  the  sloop  I  was  on  in 
a  long  canoe,  burnt  as  brown  as  Indians  bv  the  hot 
Caribbean  sun,  and  clambered  aboard.  I  eagerly 
took  Boj'^iston  aside  and  asked  him  how  much  treas- 
ure they  had  got. 

"  'Treasure !  hell !'  was  his  reply,  'we  haven't  even 
found  the  jjlace  yet.' 

"The  pilot,  who  was  one  of  the  chief  promoters  of 
the  scheme  and  a  gentleman  of  uncertain  methods, 
was  at  fault.  He  was  gambling  on  a  very  little  exact 
information.  However,  the  cook  of  my  sloop  had 
been  with  the  vessel  that  first  discovered  the  wreck 
and  had  taken  out  the  bulk  of  the  treasure  recovered, 
so  after  sufficient  inducement  had  been  offered,  he 
located  the  wreck  for  us  and  we  got  to  work. 

"It  was  an  impossible  place,  eighty  miles  off  shore 
on  a  shallow  reef  over  which  the  seas  were  constantly 


156  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

breaking.  Our  divers  were  handicapped  by  a  heavy- 
undertow  and  were  forced  to  blast  at  random  with 
little  indication  of  where  the  wrecked  vessel  really  lay, 
as  centuries  of  coral  growth  had  almost  completely 
encrusted  her.  We  got  a  good  deal  of  junk  from  her 
that  marked  her  as  a  pirate  ship  or  galleon,  but  we 
never  saw  a  dubloon  or  a  'piece  of  eight.' 

"Scull  worked  faithfully  on  our  little  scow,  the 
Dirty  Mary,  running  the  sand  pump,  blastings,  ex- 
amining the  bottom,  but  to  no  avail.  Boylston 
amused  himself  by  running  the  seas  as  they  broke  over 
the  reef  in  the  canoe  with  a  crew  of  Indian  and  negro 
boys,  all  yelling  like  savages  and  as  naked  as  the  day 
they  were  born.  In  the  evenings  we  rolled  uncom- 
fortably in  our  hammocks  on  the  Seagull  and  wished 
we  were  home.  Finally  our  water  and  dynamite 
gave  out  and  a  blow  came  up,  so  Scull  reluctantly 
gave  the  order  to  abandon  the  scow,  up  anchor  and 
sail  for  Kingston. 

"We  got  on  a  reef  on  the  way  but  got  off  again 
with  little  damage  to  the  ship.  At  Kingston  the  ex- 
pedition was  terminated  and  after  disposing  of  our 
outfit  we  sailed  for  home.  Scull  was  the  most  dis- 
appointed member  of  the  party,  for  he  hated  to  fall 
down  on  anything  he  undertook.  The  rest  of  us  had 
a  good  time  so  we  didn't  worry.  But  I  believe  that 
Scull  would  have  embarked  on  the  next  expedition 
of  a  similar  nature  that  was  presented  to  him  with 
equal  enthusiasm,  for  he  just  naturally  loved  the 
game.*' 


LOSS    OF   THE    MAYFLOWER      157 

Mrs.  Scull  received  the  first  news  of  the  loss  of  the 
Ma5^flower  and  the  rescue  of  the  crew,  includmg  her 
son,  by  wire  from  Baltimore  into  which  port  the 
steamship  Hippolite  Dumois  of  the  United  Fruit 
Line  steamed  with  the  survivors.  Scull  also  wrote 
from  New  York  and  she  received  confirmation  of  the 
rescue  and  more  details  from  another  member  of  the 
crew,  who  added  this  note: 

"We  have  to  be  thankful  that  the  crew  did  not 
ihare  the  fate  of  the  unfortunate  vessel  and  we  are 
all  satisfied  to  get  back  our  friends  alive  and  doubly 
proud  of  them  for  their  heroism  at  the  time  of  the 
wreck.  I  wish  to  say  that  even  when  expecting  death 
each  moment,  Guy  was  regretting  the  loss  of  the  ship 
and  the  failure  of  the  expedition." 

An  anti-climax  of  the  cruise  and  loss  of  the  May- 
flower is  revealed  in  another  letter  received  by  Mrs. 
Scull  shortly  after  the  survivors  reached  New  York, 
which  saj'^s: 

"Guy  is  laboriously  getting  ready  to  go  to  a  dinner 
party,  to  the  high  delight  of  Roger  Derby  and  all  his 
crowd.  It  seems  that  while  they  were  all  upon  their 
cruise.  South,  Roger  showed  Guy  a  picture  of  a  girl 
that  Guy  admired  very  much.  After  a  lot  of  joking 
Guy  promised  if  Roger  would  produce  the  girl  he 
would  meet  her.  He  promptly  forgot  all  about  it, 
but  Roger  did  not.  He  got  his  sister  to  give  a  dinner 
party,  get  the  girl  (she  lived  out  of  town)  and  then 
put  it  up  to  Guy  to  keep  his  promise.  The  Skipper 
fussed  and  fumed  and  squirmed,  but  finally  had  to 


158  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

accept,  to  the  intense  delight  of  the  whole  Harvard 
Club.  They  were  now  all  busy  formally  shaking 
him  by  the  hand  and  saying  good-bye  to  him." 

But  there  is  no  further  record  that  the  attempt  to 
interest  Scull  in  dinner  parties  and  pretty  girls  was 
a  success.  It  no  doubt  wasn't,  for  the  Skipper  was 
about  as  enthusiastic  as  solid  cement  when  it  came 
to  pushing  him  into  this  side  of  life.  He  was  still 
at  this  period  a  victim  of  the  wanderlust  and  headed 
straight  in  the  opposite  direction. 


Chapter  XII 

NEW  YORK  CITY  POLICE  DEPARTMENT 

1908-1909 

General  Theodore  A.  Bingham,  Police  Commis- 
sioner under  Mayor  McClellan,  appointed  Scull  to 
the  first  position  he  had  in  the  Police  Department. 
That  was  in  December,  1908. 

"He  was  then  a  slender,  wiry,  soft-spoken  fellow 
with  strikingly  blue  eyes,"  writes  General  Bingham, 
"exceptional  in  his  reticence,  one  might  say  in  his 
silence,  for  he  spoke  so  little.  He  was  exceedingly 
modest  and  retiring.  But  underneath  all  this  was  a 
restless,  bold,  adventurous  spirit.  He  was  always 
looking  for  experiences  of  unusual  and  dramatic 
kinds — with  plenty  of  excitement  and  even  risk,  if 
possible,  to  life  and  limb.  When  asked  about  his 
adventures,  he  would  smile,  but  say  little,  except  on 
rare  occasions. 

"In  Scull's  extraordinary  quiet,  modest  way  he 
must  have  had  a  great  deal  of  fun. 

"Though  one  would  never  have  suspected  it,  just  to 
meet  him  casually,  he  was  all  for  action. 

"He  was  alert  and  keen  in  mind,  tough  in  body, 
of  well  disciplined  temper,  full  of  the  real  spirit  of 
adventure,  bold  but  not  foolhardy,  full  of  nerve  and 
probably  the  most  desirable  man  I  have  ever  met 

159 


160  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

to  have  beside  one  in  a  tight  and  dangerous  scrap. 
He  was  courteous,  gentle,  kindly,  universally  be- 
loved— a  real  man  with  the  bubbling  heart  of  a  boy.*' 

Arthur  Woods  brought  Scull  to  General  Bing- 
ham's attention.  Woods  had  been  made  Fourth  Dep- 
uty Police  Commissioner  by  General  Bingham  fol- 
lowing an  investigation  into  police  conditions  which 
Woods  had  made  for  a  committee  of  citizens.  Both 
Woods  and  Scull  were  strangers  at  Headquarters. 
They  did  not  know  the  newspaper  reporters  any 
better  than  they  did  the  members  of  the  force,  or  the 
Commissioner's  official  family.  Woods,  barring  his 
short  newspaper  career,  came  direct  into  the  study 
of  police  conditions  here  and  abroad  from  a  master's 
position  at  Groton  School.  Before  that  he  had  spent 
one  year  of  post-graduate  work  in  a  German  uni- 
versity following  four  3^ears  at  Harvard,  from  which 
he  was  graduated  in  1892,  six  years  before  Scull.  He 
was  a  high-grade  scholar,  a  keen  student  of  civic 
affairs,  devoted  to  out-of-doors  sports,  a  good,  whole- 
some type  of  the  present-day  educator. 

If  Scull  did  not  bring  as  much  book  learning  to  his 
new  job  as  did  Woods,  his  boss,  he  balanced  his  side 
of  the  ledger  with  what  he  had  learned  in  the  rough 
school  of  experience  in  newspaper  work,  in  the  army 
in  South  Africa,  East  Africa,  IManchuria,  Japan  and 
Russia.  Together  these  two  men  made  a  strong  com- 
bination. Scull  was  devoted  to  his  work  from  the 
start,  staying  all  hours  on  the  job  either  at  his  desk 
or  prowling  around  town.     The  force  did  not  take 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909     161 

instantly  to  him.  He  was  loioAvn  to  the  "old-timers" 
as  a  "Haa-vared"  man  with  the  broad  accent  on  the 
first  sj^llable.  But  it  was  not  long  before  the  real 
policemen  got  his  true  measure. 

"Boots"  Trojan,  a  detective-sergeant,  expressed 
this  as  only  a  New  York  "cop"  can  when  he  declared: 

"I  had  Scull  all  wrong  from  the  start.  The  first 
time  I  went  in  to  see  him  I  said  to  myself,  'My  God, 
he's  a  portrait.'  He  looked  like  one  of  those  swell 
canvases  hanging  up  there  in  the  Park.  But  you  see 
the  only  person  I  was  kidding  was  myself.  I  jumped 
at  a  guess  on  that  fellow  and  muffed  him,  absolutely. 

"I  had  to  wait  that  day  before  getting  to  him  and 
as  I  studied  him  in  those  few  minutes  I  knew  my  first 
guess  was  wrong. 

"Although  he  looked  dressy,  he  wasn't.  Get  me? 
It  wasn't  his  clothes.  Anything  would  look  good  on 
that  fellow.  He  didn't  say  much  but  he  had  a  drawl 
like  a  comedian,  and  yet  you  didn't  loiow  whether  he 
was  stringing  you  or  in  earnest,  and  you  liked  it.  Then 
I  took  a  real  tumble  to  his  face.  It  was  a  portrait  but 
it  was  class.  It  was  the  face  of  a  leader,  something 
fine  and  strong  and  yet  sad.  He  reminded  me  of 
those  old  fellows  in  the  history  books  we  had  in  school. 
When  he  spoke  to  me  he  didn't  roar  and  spit.  He  had 
a  soft,  easy,  lead-me-to-it  voice.  That  was  Scull  as 
I  saw  him  first  and  afterwards  learned  to  know  him, 
and  I  don't  want  to  know  any  better." 

"Boots'  "  name  was  George.  He  was  one  of  the 
group  of  reliable  policemen  with  whom  Scull  first 


162  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

came  in  contact  and  who  took  him  around  town  and 
made  him  acquainted  with  police  business.  It  was 
Trojan  who  got  Scull  out  one  cold  winter  night  soon 
after  he  came  to  Headquarters  with  a  telephone  mes- 
sage that  he,  Trojan,  had  "holed  up"  a  gang  of  river 
pirates.  Did  the  Commissioner  want  to  come  down 
and  get  in  the  raid?  It  didn't  take  Scull  long  to  get 
there,  minus  an  overcoat  and  gloves  and  his  derby- 
jammed  down  over  his  ears.  Those  wharf-rats  had 
been  terrorizing  the  barge  and  canal  boatmen  along 
South  Street  for  months,  and  had  left  a  trail  reeking 
with  assaults,  robberies  and  worse  among  the  boatmen 
and  their  families.  Trojan  was  ringing  up  Headquar- 
ters for  a  raiding  party  when  Scull  arrived. 

"Leave  'em  behind,"  said  this  Harvard  man.  "Come 
on.  We  haven't  got  time.  Let's  jump  the  gang 
alone." 

"Sure,"  said  Trojan. 

So  alone  these  two  went  after  a  good-sized  gang  of 
tough  wharf-rats  and  river  pirates.  They  sneaked 
down  a  long  wharf,  slii^ped  into  a  rowboat,  and 
pushed  off  in  the  black  night  feeling  their  way  around 
the  pier  heads,  in  and  out  among  the  boats,  under 
wharves,  until  finally  they  came  to  their  quarry's 
hole.     Then  thej'^  left  their  boat  and  climbed. 

"Scull  was  right  on  top  of  me  all  the  time,"  said 
Trojan.  "I  didn't  have  to  wait  for  him.  Both  of 
us  had  guns,  but  I  was  worried  for  fear  of  his  get- 
ting hurt.  He  ruined  his  clothes,  lost  his  derby  hat, 
and  skinned  his  hands  till  thev  bled,  and  then  when 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909     163 

we  finally  rushed  the  place  and  busted  in  the  door, 
the  dump  was  empty.  It  was  a  shack  built  of  boxes 
and  driftAvood  back  in  under  the  land  end  of  a  pier, 

but  a  place  that  couldn't  be  reached  except  from  the 
water  at  high  tide.  We  destroyed  it,  leaving  it  in 
ruins,  and  carting  away  a  load  of  junk.  As  we  were 
climbing  back  into  the  boat  Scull  said  he  had  forgot 
something  and  went  back,  and  what  do  you  think  he 
did?  He  pinned  a  piece  of  paper  on  a  post  over  the 
ruins  with  a  skull  and  crossbones  on  it  and  under- 
neath the  words  in  big  letters   'BEWARE.'     He 

printed  the  thing  himself  with  his  fountain  pen  and 
chuckled  like  a  boy  as  he  did  it.  When  he  left  me 
in  the  dawn  of  that  morning  he  said: 

"  'Trojan,  I  wouldn't  have  missed  that  party  for  a 
year's  salary.'  " 

James  Bresnan,  another  detective-sergeant  who 
came  early  in  contact  with  Scull,  said  that  usually 
when  they  v/ere  called  to  the  front  office  it  meant  a 
"bawling  out"  and  when  he  was  first  ordered  to  see 
Scull  he  went  "meek  and  humble." 

"I  was  the  most  surprised  cop  in  the  line-up,"  said 
Bresnan.  "I  didn't  get  the  usual  gruff,  'What's  the 
matter  with  you?'  or  'Whoever  told  you  you  were  a 
detective?'  It  was  'How  are  you  coming  on  with  this 
case.  Officer?  Is  there  any  assistance  you  want?  Can 
I  personally  be  of  help  to  you?'  And  after  I  had 
finished  with  my  report  and  was  going  out,  he  asked 
me  to  make  his  office  my  headquarters  and  to  come 


164  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

direct  to  him  any  time  I  wanted  to.  I  went  out  with 
the  thought  that  I  was  somebody,  and  that  I  would 
work  my  head  off  for  this  man  who  gave  me  credit 
for  having  brains,  even  if  I  didn't  have  smy.  Com- 
missioner Scull  not  only  made  good  on  what  he  prom- 
ised, but  no  matter  in  how  tight  a  comer  I  got  at 
times  Scull  was  always  behind  me  backing  me  up  to 
the  limit." 

Such  was  Scull  as  the  policemen  found  him  and 
got  to  know  him.  As  he  became  acquainted  with 
office  routine.  Woods  began  turning  over  to  him 
cases  to  handle  himself.  He  had  special  men  as- 
signed to  him  as  a  field  force. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  the  newspapers  began 
an  expose  of  a  loathsome  traffic  in  human  beings 
which  had  been  steadily  increasing  among  immigrant 
classes  during  the  last  ten  years. 

Both  dealers  and  their  victims  of  barter  were  of 
the  lowest  order  of  intelligence;  the  dealers,  brutal 
and  despicable  beyond  words,  and  the  victims,  igno- 
rant unfortunates  recruited  from  the  ranks  of  outcasts 
both  here  and  abroad.  The  name  given  the  unfortu- 
nate women  was  "White  Slaves"  and  the  wretches, 
their  masters,  were  laiown  as  "cadets."  In  many 
instances  it  was  charged  that  the  "White  Slaves"  were 
actually  bought  and  sold,  but  the  Mann  Act  (June 
25,  1910)  was  not  then  on  the  statute  books,  and  it 
was  as  difficult  to  draw  a  legal  complaint  on  which  to 
obtain  a  conviction  in  court  as  it  was  to  show  proof 
of  the  traffic. 

The  cleaning  up  of  th.s  traffic  in  New  York  City 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909     165 

was  one  of  the  first  tasks  assigned  by  Deputy  Com- 
missioner Woods  to  his  assistant,  Scull,  and  he 
lost  no  time  in  starting  a  survey  of  the  town,  on 
which  he  could  make  a  round-up  of  these  human 
wolves  who  infested  it.  I  mention  this  here  because 
of  its  importance  to  the  police  work  of  the  country, 
and  because  of  the  effect  of  this  investigation  and 
the  evidence  collected,  on  Federal  legislation  that 
followed. 

Working  with  Scull  on  this  survey  and  investiga- 
tion was  Professor  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks,  a  member  of 
the  U.  S.  Immigration  Commission,  who  was  direct- 
ing the  investigation  of  certain  evasions  of  the  Fed- 
eral law  and  also  of  the  relations  of  immigrants  to 
various  social  problems,  especially  crime,  pauperism, 
disease,  etc.  The  co-operation  of  Professor  Jenks 
was  obtained  by  General  Bingham  through  his  close 
relations  with  the  Federal  authorities  in  Washington. 

Professor  Jenks  writes: 

"The  work  with  the  criminal  immigrant  wns  of 
quite  a  different  type  from  the  White  Slave  traffic, 
even  more  dangerous,  if  possible,  as  regards  the  de- 
tectives, and  on  the  whole  probably  more  successful, 
had  the  Police  Department  in  New  York  not  changed 
its  administration  before  the  work  was  completed.  It 
was  while  at  work  in  Italy  on  work  developed  along 
these  lines  that  Petrosino  was  murdered. 

"The  work  was  very  dangerous  here  because  the 
men  in  the  field  were  dealing  with  criminal  char- 
acters, men  who  were  levying  blackmail  upon  their 


166  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

own  countrymen  here  and  who  were  committing  the 
other  desperate  crimes  of  the  Black  Hand.  In  con- 
sequence, in  order  to  avoid  every  chance  of  exposing 
them,  I  never  saw  but  twice  the  Italian  who  was 
working  for  the  Commission,  and  then,  under  an  as- 
sumed name,  I  visited  a  friend  of  his  where  he  met 
me  in  order  that  I  might  know  the  kind  of  man  to 
whom  I  was  furnishing  pay  and  be  able  better  to 
judge  the  trustworthy  character  of  his  work. 

"Here  again,  in  this  work.  Scull's  intellectual  acu- 
men was  of  the  greatest  assistance  and  to  him  should 
be  given  in  good  part  the  credit  for  the  very  success- 
ful development  of  the  work  in  the  Police  Depart- 
ment.   When  General  Bingham  and  with  him  Arthur 
Woods,  Guy  Scull  and  two  other  deputies  resigned, 
there  were  in  the  records  of  the  Police  Department 
more   than   one   hundred   certified   copies    of    crim- 
inal records  of  Italian  criminals  in  the  United  States, 
mostly  in  New  York  and  vicinity,  whose  addresses 
were  known  and  whose  deportation  was  impending. 
It  had  been  thought  best,  in  order  to  avoid  detection 
and  the  consequent  scattering  and  escape  of  the  crim- 
inals, that  arrangements  be  made  with  the  immigra- 
tion authorities  at  Ellis  Island  only  after  the  evi- 
dence was  completed  and  the  men  in  large  numbers 
could  be  rounded  up  at  once  and  sent  off.    A  deporta- 
tion at  one  time  of  large  numbers  of  criminals  of  that 
class  would  have  been  the  greatest  blow  to  the  black- 
hand  work  and  to  the  criminal  immigrants  known  in 
the  history  of  the  city. 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909     167 

"Knowing  the  facts  in  the  case,  after  the  retirement 
of  Woods  and  Scull,  I  went  to  the  new  head  of  this 
work  in  the  department  and  told  him  I  had  been  cog- 
nizant of  the  facts  and  asked  him  if  I  could  be  of  any 
service  in  carrying  on  the  work.  He  told  me  that  he 
knew  the  fact  that  these  criminal  records  were  in  the 
files  of  the  department,  but  that  he  and  the  new  com- 
missioner were  of  the  opinion  that  the  police  force 
of  New  York  had  enough  to  do  in  keeping  order  in 
New  York  City  without  troubling  about  the  criminal 
situation  in  Rome,  Naples,  and  other  foreign  cities! 
The  Police  Department  proposed  to  take  no  further 
action  in  that  direction.  How  many  bombs  were  later 
thro^vn,  well-to-do  Italians  blackmailed,  and  murders 
committed  by  these  criminals  that  might  have  been 
and  would  have  been  deported  had  Woods  and  Scull 
remained  in  their  positions  it  is  left  for  the  reader 
to  judge. 

"In  these  two  fields  Scull  and  I  were  associated  for 
many  months.  In  his  very  modest,  quiet  way,  never 
claiming  any  credit  or  making  himself  in  the  least 
conspicuous,  he  furnished  continually  ideas  and  plans, 
and  wherever  necessary  and  practicable  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  Police  Department  which  were  of  the  very 
greatest  assistance  to  the  Immigration  Commission  in 
carrying  on  its  work.  In  addition  thereto  his  work, 
with  the  full  authority  of  Colonel  Woods  and  General 
Bingham  back  of  it,  gave  to  New  York  within  those 
two  years  the  cleanest  conditions  as  regards  vice 
and  crime  that  it  had  known  for  many  years  before 


168  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

or  that  it  has  known  since,  with  the  possible  exception 
of  the  later  period  when  Colonel  Woods,  as  Commis- 
sioner of  Police,  had  the  direction  of  the  whole  city. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  express  too  high  an  apprecia- 
tion of  the  efficiency  and  success  of  Guy  Scull's  work." 

In  one  raid  of  a  West  28th  Street  boarding-house 
during  the  "white  slave"  investigation  Scull  gathered 
in  a  notorious  Belgian  character  who  had  been  living 
on  the  earnings  of  his  women  and  had  so  far  eluded 
arrest.  It  was  Scull's  first  really  big  case  and  Scull 
was  anxious  to  make  his  evidence  so  complete  that  the 
wretch  couldn't  beat  it  in  court.  Scull  had  a  most 
wholesome  respect  for  the  rules  of  evidence,  but  he 
had  an  equal  scorn  for  several  of  the  judges  and  law- 
yers then  practising  in  the  criminal  courts.  He  real- 
ized, however,  that  he  was  a  novice  at  the  game,  and 
so  swallowed  his  pride,  and  asked  a  lawyer  friend  to 
sit  in  and  coach  him  during  the  examination  of  the 
prisoner.  Using  the  police  phrase,  Headquarters  was 
"wise"  to  the  event,  the  reporters  were  "wise,"  and 
the  case  became  a  topic  of  interest,  with  everyone 
keen  to  see  how  Woods'  new  assistant  would  handle 
his  first  big  case.  One  of  the  deputies  described  the 
scene  at  the  examination.  Scull  sat  at  his  desk  in  the 
role  of  inquisitor;  in  front  of  him,  the  white,  pasty- 
faced  Belgian  with  a  sneer  on  his  face  and  the  manner 
of  a  man  confident  of  his  safety,  and  extremely  bored. 
On  one  side  sat  the  stenographer,  and  on  the  other 
the  lawyer  friend. 

Scull  went  laboriously  into  a  long  quiz  as  to  the 


N.   Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909      169 

life  and  record  of  the  prisoner,  getting  by  his  o^vn 
admissions  a  complete  record  of  his  life.  It  wasn't 
a  pretty  story  either.  Then  he  suddenly  switched 
to  the  incident  of  his  arrest. 

Q.  Do  you  work  for  a  living? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Had  one  in  the  past  five  years? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Got  a  bank  account? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Who  pays  for  your  clothes? 

A.  A  friend. 

Q.  Who  pays  for  your  food? 

A.  A  friend. 

Q.  A  lady  friend? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Have  you  got  more  than  one  of  these  lady 
friends  ? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  How  many? 

A.  Maybe  five,  maybe  six ! 

Q.  And  they  all  work  for  you? 

A.  They  are  crazee  about  me! 

Q.  What  sort  of  jobs  have  they? 

A.  That  is  their  business.  I  nevair  ask  a  lady  her 
business. 

Q.  Can  you  guess? 

A.  Maybe  yes,  maybe  no! 

Q.  They  go  out  on  the  street  for  you,  don't  they? 

A.  Sure  they  go  on  the  street. 


170  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Q.  They  "hustle"  for  you,  don't  they? 

A.  That's  it.  Veery  good.  "Hustle."  Veery, 
veery  good! 

"I  don't  believe  you  need  go  any  further,"  inter- 
rupted Scull's  lawyer  friend,  breaking  into  the  ex- 
amination at  this  point.  "I  think  you  have  sufficiently 
proved  the  social  position  of  this  gentleman." 

"Good,"  said  Scull.     "That's  a  relief." 

This  case  held,  and  a  conviction  was  secured. 

Scull  was  crowned  with  a  nom  de  plume  in  the 
early  days  of  his  police  experience.  It  was  "Mr. 
Tobin  of  Cohoes,  N.  Y.,"  and  it  stuck,  or  rather  the 
story  did.  "Jimmie"  Finn,  another  detective  ser- 
geant, gave  Scull  that  "moniker."  Finn,  a  slight, 
thin-faced,  sharp-eyed  policeman,  who  looked  like  a 
boy  then,  and  hasn't  grown  much  older  in  looks  since, 
was  Wood's  authority  on  gang  activities,  and  after- 
ward made  leader  of  the  Gang  Squad,  which  did 
much  effective  work.    Finn  writes: 

"I  was  selected  to  take  Mr.  Scull  out  one  night, 
show  him  the  various  rendezvous  of  members  of  the 
underworld,  and  give  him  a  sort  of  a  close-up.  I 
could  not  very  well  introduce  him  to  our  friends  as 
the  secretary  of  the  Fourth  Deputy  Police  Commis- 
sioner, so  I  had  to  look  him  over  carefully,  see  what 
name  and  city  I  could  give  to  the  various  joint  keep- 
ers, crooks  and  hangers-on  v/ith  whom  we  came  in 
contact.  I  told  Mr.  Scull  he  was  a  sight-see-er  and 
would  have  to  stand  for  what  I  called  him.  His  tall, 
outdoor  looking  appearance  at  that  time,  with  the 


N.   Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909      171 

slight  twang  he  had,  made  him  look  and  act  like  a 
man  from  the  country.  So  I  named  him  'Mr.  Tobin 
from  Cohoes.'  I  don't  think  the  conditions  he  saw 
on  that  night  were  ever  witnessed  by  him  again.  We 
made  a  night  of  it,  and  'Mr.  Tobin'  certainly  had  a 
good  time.  He  never  missed  a  trick,  and  played  up 
to  the  mob  I  'buzzed'  him  to  like  a  bom  actor.  He 
spoke  very  little  to  any  of  these  birds  all  during  the 
trip,  but  he  was  a  good  listener,  and  when  he  did 
speak  he  always  said  just  enough  and  no  more,  but 
his  sharp  eyes,  grim  smile  and  the  different  slants  of 
his  long  cigar  always  had  me  wise  that  he  was  on  to 
everything  that  was  doing. 

"Scull's  manner  with  the  detectives  and  the  other 
members  of  the  force  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  get- 
ting their  confidence  at  the  time  of  Commissioner 
Woods'  reorganization  of  the  Bureau.  They  had  faith 
in  him  absolutely,  knew  he  was  the  right  breed,  and 
could  trust  him  with  their  confidence.  That  meant 
more  than  the  public  knew  in  the  reorganization  that 
followed. 

"The  memory  of  the  late  Major  Scull  is  one  of 
the  pleasantest  things  the  Detective  Bureau  has  to 
look  back  upon.  Although  he  had  many  trying  times 
and  the  newspapers  often  roasted  him,  he  never  lost 
his  head,  and  he  never  failed  to  stand  up  for  and  back 
up  his  subordinates." 

The  Bingham  administration  came  to  an  end  rather 
abruptly  and  closed  for  the  time  being  Scull's  police 
activities  in  New  York.    The  incident  had  an  impor- 


172  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

tant  effect  upon  Scull,  undoubtedly  affecting  his  sub- 
sequent career.  This  sudden  termination  of  a  new 
and  altogether  fine  police  administration  for  a  city 
that  had  fared  so  notoriously  ill  in  this  line,  gave  to 
Scull  a  first-hand  picture  of  the  viselike  grip  partisan 
politics  had  upon  the  police,  and  what  the  members 
of  the  force  themselves  had  to  contend  with.  It  laid 
bare  with  all  its  sordidness  the  working  of  the  so- 
called  "political  pull"  and  illustrated  in  no  uncertain 
way  the  discouragement  and  rebuff  offered  a  clean, 
high-principled  head  of  a  department  in  trying  to 
honestly  administer  his  sworn  duty. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  review  the  removal  of  Po- 
lice Commissioner  Bingham  from  office,  an  incident 
now  forgotten,  but  which  shook  the  city  when  it  was 
announced.  There  have  been  various  reasons  given 
as  the  cause  of  this  summary  action.  Stripped  of  all 
verbiage,  the  facts  are  that  a  citizen  demanded  that 
the  Police  Commissioner  destroy  a  set  of  fingerprints 
in  the  Bureau  of  Identification  of  the  Detective  Bu- 
reau at  Headquarters.  The  General  prom.ptly  re- 
fused. The  Mayor  asked  the  General  to  resign.  This 
the  General  also  declined  to  do  and  the  Mayor  re- 
moved him  forthwith.  The  Bingham  administration 
went  out  of  office  at  midnight  on  the  29th  of  June, 
and  the  departure  of  these  men,  together,  from  the 
old  Mulberry  Street  building  is  said  to  have  been 
one  of  the  most  dramatic  scenes  ever  witnessed  at 
Police  Headquarters. 

The  one  deputy  who  accepted  the  Mayor's  invita- 


]Sr.   Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1908-1909       173 

tion  to  stay,  and  who  declined  to  go  out  with  his  for- 
mer associates,  was  given  the  office  vacated  by  his  for- 
mer chief. 

The  fingerprinted  subject  whose  political  friends 
precipitated  the  controversy  was  afterwards  caught 
by  the  police  in  an  even  more  serious  predicament, 
and  the  evidence  in  the  case  absolutely  vindicated 
General  Bingham's  position. 

Soon  after  the  dramatic  end  of  the  Bingham  ad- 
ministration Scull  was  in  conference  with  IMorgan 
Schuster,  recently  returned  from  Persia,  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  organization  of  a  uniformed  police  for  the 
Shah.  Scull  was  modeling  it  after  the  Xorthwest 
Mounted  Police  of  Canada.  Edmund  Leigh,  a  police 
detective,  was  working  with  him  on  it,  but  the  thing 
dragged  into  an  indefinite  correspondence  with  the 
East.  Buffalo  Jones  came  out  of  the  West  with  an 
entirely  new  proposition  and  Scull  went  to  British 
East  Africa  instead  of  Persia,  all  of  which  is  told  in 
the  next  chapter. 


Chapter  XIII 

NAIROBI— 1910 

Men  of  the  plains  and  the  mountains  had  an  equal 
place  in  the  Skipper's  affection  with  the  men  of  the 
sea.  He  liked  wild  horses  and  he  probably  liked  the 
men  who  could  tame  them.  He  liked  the  range  life. 
Scull  first  came  to  know  these  Westerners  when  in 
the  Rough  Riders.  Later  he  lived  with  cattle  men  on 
a  ranch  in  New  Mexico.  He  rode  herd  and  bunked 
with  them.  He  worked  and  played  with  them.  He 
learned  to  understand  them.  Probably  if  Scull  had 
not  turned  this  leaf  of  life  out  there  on  the  plains 
he  never  would  have  met  up  with  "Buffalo  Jones." 
He  would  never  have  laiown  how  to  handle  this  ec- 
centric character  and  this  Nairobi  chapter  would 
never  have  been  written.  But  come  together  Jones 
and  Scull  did,  and  the  place  of  meeting  was  not  a 
water  hole  in  the  canyon  country,  but  a  prosaic  law 
office  in  Nassau  Street,  New  York  City.  Here,  as 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  "Buffalo  Jones"  and  the 
Skipper,  together  with  several  other  gentlemen, 
formed  an  exploration  company  to  back  Scull  and 
"The  Colonel,"  as  "Buffalo  Jones"  was  called,  in  an 
expedition  to  British  East  Africa  to  lasso  lions  and 
rhinoceros  and  all  other  big  game  they  could  find. 

174 


03 

O 


x; 


o 


NAIROBI  175 

It  all  sounds  ridiculously  out  of  place.  Nassau 
Street  and  rhinoceros !  The  practice  of  law  and  the 
hunting  of  big  game  do  not  sound  quite  so  strange, 
nor  Wall  Street  and  Bears  and  Bulls,  but  somehow 
"Buffalo  Jones"  and  the  Skipper  meeting  up  in 
Nassau  Street  to  go  roping  lions,  giraffes  and  such 
things  in  East  Africa  appears  to  be  almost  a  bur- 
lesque. And  yet  that  day  these  men  met  Charles 
Sumner  Bird  of  Boston,  and  Arthur  A.  Fowler,  of 
New  York,  in  a  directors'  meeting  in  the  Nassau 
Street  office  it  was  just  as  serious  and  grave  a  busi- 
ness as  was  ever  attempted  in  any  other  directors' 
meeting,  whether  banks,  railroads  or  manufactories. 
It  took  considerable  money  to  finance  a  trip  of  up- 
wards of  one  hundred  men  and  animals  into  the  heart 
of  a  wild  African  country  on  what  might  seem  at 
first  glance  a  wild  adventure.  It  would  have  been 
much  easier  and  safer  to  raise  the  same  amount  for 
grain  or  cotton  for  instance,  but  these  men  were  not 
rash  or  foolish.  They  were  really  going  to  try  and 
find  some  African  big  game  to  bring  back  to  the 
Western  U.  S.  A.  for  crossing  with  buffalo  in  experi- 
ments to  produce  a  new  hybrid  that  would  provide 
both  hide  and  meat  at  low  cost  for  the  market.  Inci- 
dentally, Colonel  Jones  and  his  cowboys  were  to  try 
roping  the  same  big  game  that  other  American  big 
game  hunters  (noticeably  Roosevelt)  had  recently 
succeeded  in  shooting;  and  to  pay  for  the  trip,  the 
experiments  and  the  sport,  the  company  decided  to 
take  moving  picture  cameras  along  to  get  movies  of 


176  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  cowboys  and  lions  in  action  which  might  be  sold  to 
English  and  American  houses  at  a  good  profit.  Such 
was  the  conception  and  the  start  of  what  was  called 
the  Buffalo  Jones  Expedition.  Scull  was  made  man- 
ager of  the  expedition  and  given  command  of  it  at 
all  times  except  when  actually  on  the  hunt  in  the 
field;  then  Colonel  Jones  was  to  assume  command 
and  take  all  responsibility. 

Jones  was  a  western  plainsman,  sixty-five  years  of 
age  at  that  time,  who  had  in  his  career  roped  and 
tied,  often  single-handed,  every  kind  of  wild  animal 
of  consequence  to  be  found  in  our  western  country. 
He  had  climbed  trees  after  mountain  lions  and  with 
a  lasso  over  a  branch  had  hauled  grizzlies  up  into  the 
air  by  one  hind  leg.  He  had  alone,  made  a  journey 
over  a  country  that  no  white  man  had  over  traveled 
before  to  reach  the  land  of  the  musk-ox  on  the  border 
of  the  Arctic  Circle.  He  had,  moreover,  roped  musk- 
oxen  and  started  out  with  five  live  calves  to  reach  the 
settlements  after  fearful  exposure  to  the  weather, 
only  to  lose  his  prizes  through  the  treachery  of  In- 
dian guides,  who,  obeying  the  laws  of  their  religion, 
killed  the  calves  rather  than  have  them  pass  into  the 
hands  of  the  white  man.  The  success  Jones  had 
achieved  with  the  mountain  lion  of  the  Southwest,  the 
musk-ox  of  the  North  and  the  grizzly  bear  of  the 
Rockies  did  not  satisfy  him.  For  twenty  years  it  had 
been  his  one  ambition  to  take  an  outfit  to  British  East 
Africa  to  try  his  hand  with  the  big  game  of  that  coun- 
try.   It  was  with  such  a  man,  and  Mr.  Fowler  and 


NAIROBI  177 

Mr.  Sewall,  that  Scull  sailed  from  New  York  later 
in  the  month  for  London. 

William  Maxwell,  an  English  writer  and  corre- 
spondent in  the  Boer  War  with  Scull,  met  "Buffalo 
Jones"  and  Scull  soon  after  their  arrival  in  London. 
He  describes  the  meeting  in  the  London  Daily  JMail 
of  January  28th,  as  follows: 

"I  met  Scull  by  chance  in  Piccadilly,  the  collar  of 
his  heavy  coat  was  turned  up,  his  hands  were  deep 
in  his  pockets,  though  raised  in  New  England  he  feels 
the  cold.    'Where  are  you  off  to  now?'  I  asked. 

"  'East  Africa.' 

"  'What  for?' 

"  'Rope  lions.' 

"If  any  other  man  had  given  me  that  answer  I 
would  have  looked  around  for  a  policeman  but  it  was 
Scull,  my  American  friend  with  whom  I  had  had  ad- 
ventures in  Asia  and  Africa — Scull,  the  cavalry  man, 
the  cowboy  and  the  war  correspondent. 

"Scull  was  always  laconic  and  always  serious  and 
I  always  took  him  seriously.  Thus  it  happened  that  I 
found  myself  in  an  old-fashioned  hotel  next  day  shak- 
ing hands  again  with  him  and  'Buffalo  Jones.'  I  can 
still  feel  the  grip  of  that  iron  hand  and  am  sorry  for 
the  lions  in  East  Africa,  for  'Buffalo  Jones'  is  ffoincf 
to  show  the  world  that  lions  may  be  cauglit  by  hand 
instead  of  being  trapped  or  shot.  What  will  happen 
after  he  has  lassoed  them  he  does  not  pretend  to  say, 
that  is  a  secret  between  the  lion  and  Mr.  Jones  and 
Scull. 


178  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

"  *I  am  not  going  to  submit  my  proofs  to  Copen- 
hagen,' remarked  'Buffalo  Jones'  with  a  gay  twinkle 
in  his  eye.  'Our  friend  Scull  is  going  to  take  photo- 
graphs while  I  do  the  roping.  No  Copehagen  for 
me.'  (This  was  shortly  after  the  incident  of  Dr. 
Cook  and  his  famous  controversy  over  the  discovery 
of  the  North  Pole.) 

"  'And  how  do  you  expect  to  get  on  with  the  Afri- 
can lion?'  I  asked. 

"  'Well,  the  African  lion  is  a  difficult  problem,  but 
it's  got  to  be  solved.  I'll  catch  him  all  right,  and 
Scull  will  take  his  picture  all  right.  But  what  will 
happen  after  that  I  don't  pretend  to  know,  being  a 
hunter  and  not  a  prophet.  I  am  taking  my  branding 
irons,  and  the  lions  I  don't  want  I'll  brand  and  turn 
loose  again  to  fight  another  day.  I  shall  try  the 
rhinoceros,  and  the  buffalo  too  if  I  can  get  him  out 
of  the  bush.  I  am  taking  with  me  ten  of  the  best 
American-trained  horses  and  twelve  hounds  of  va- 
rious breeds,  some  of  which  I  have  bought  in  this 
country.  My  lassoes  are  of  Russian  hemp,  hard 
twisted  so  that  they  go  through  the  air  with  the  least 
possible  resistance.  Though  no  thicker  than  a  little 
finger,  my  lassoe  will  hold  up  a  weight  of  two  tons. 
When  I  have  made  a  capture  I  tie  it  up  with  rope, 
through  which  runs  steel  wire.'  " 

The  Jones'  expedition  after  completing  its  outfit- 
ting in  London  started  south,  sailing  from  Southamp- 
ton on  February  3rd.  Mr.  Fowler  boarded  the  ship 
at  Marseilles  and  his  brother  Arthur,  at  Aden.    The 


NAIROBI  179 

party  arrived  at  Nairobi  in  British  East  Africa  on 
March  3rd.  Jones  and  Scull  had  picked  up  in  Lon- 
don, Cherry  Kearton,  a  naturalist,  big  game  hunter 
and  cinematograph  expert;  also  David  Gobbett,  his 
assistant.  At  Nairobi  they  were  met  by  Marshall 
Loveless  and  Ambro  JNIeans,  two  western  cowboys 
who  had  shipped  from  New  York  direct  to  Africa 
with  a  bunch  of  western  cow-ponies  and  American 
dogs,  together  with  a  full  equipment  of  saddles,  ropes 
and  pack  outfit.  Ray  Ulyate,  a  white  hunter,  was 
engaged  at  Nairobi,  also  special  porters  to  carry  the 
moving-picture  machine;  a  company  of  black  men 
and  ox-wagons  engaged  from  the  Boma  Trading 
Company  to  complete  the  expedition.  This  safari 
started  out  without  any  delay  for  the  interior  of  the 
country  and  its  departure  was  commented  upon  in 
the  local  papers  with  much  enthusiasm  and  with  some 
pessimism  by  the  English  Colonists  who,  while  wish- 
ing the  Americans  all  the  best  luck  in  the  world, 
wondered  how  these  men,  with  nothing  but  ropes  and 
horses,  were  going  to  capture  the  daring  lion,  rhin- 
oceros and  other  wild  animals  which  the  great  hunters 
of  their  own  country  had  trouble  in  bringing  down 
with  high-powered  rifles. 

The  story  of  the  fortunes  of  this  expedition,  the 
hardships  it  went  through,  the  success  and  failures 
it  had,  are  thrillingly  described  by  Scull  in  "Lassoing 
Wild  Animals  in  South  Africa,"  published  by  F.  A. 
Stokes  &  Co.;  also  in  a  series  of  articles  in  Every- 
body's Magazine,  in  the    September,    October    and 


180  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

November  numbers  of  that  same  year.  In  these 
prints  there  is  no  mention  of  Scull's  part,  nor  is  there 
a  line  on  what  he  did  in  this  adventure  in  any  of  the 
articles  appearing  in  the  newspapers  of  British  East 
Africa  or  London,  which  at  that  time  were  full  of  the 
activities  of  these  American  cowboys.  Scull,  evi- 
dently in  fulfilment  of  a  promise  to  his  friend,  Max- 
well in  London,  also  wrote  two  or  three  articles  for 
the  London  Daily  Mail  describing  some  of  the  things 
he  had  seen  on  this  trip.  In  introducing  these  articles 
Maxwell  writes: 

"It  is  some  weeks  since  my  American  friend.  Scull, 
told  me  that  he  was  going  to  British  East  Africa  to 
help  to  'rope  lions.'  I  believe  Scull  to  be  capable  of 
any  adventure,  for  I  have  known  him  under  many 
conditions  and  in  many  lands.  And  when  I  had  seen 
'Buffalo  Jones'  (concerning  whom  I  wrote  in  this 
column  in  January),  and  had  recovered  from  his 
friendly  handshake,  I  believed  in  the  lion-roper  with 
whose  marvelous  exploits  every  schoolboy  in  the 
United  States  is  familiar.  The  other  day  I  received  a 
letter  from  my  old  comrade.  It  is  written  in  pencil 
and  dated  from  Soda  Swamp  Camp,  British  East 
Africa,  and  informs  me  that  'Buffalo  Jones'  and  his 
cowboys  have  begun  with  a  rhinoceros.  Here  is  the 
letter: 

"  'Somehow  everything  seems  to  happen  on  mov- 
ing day  with  this  here  outfit,'  wrote  Scull.  'On  this 
particular  moving  day  we  met  our  first  rhinoceros, 
a  big  bull,  and  the  Colonel  and  the  cowboys  roped 


NAIROBI  181 

him  and  fought  him  for  five  hours  in  the  hot  sun- 
light before  he  was  beaten.  It  was  a  little,  a  very- 
little,  like  playing  a  large  fish  on  a  light  line.  In  the 
beginning  the  rhino  dragged  the  horses  all  about, 
even  though  the  horses  planted  their  four  feet  firmly 
on  the  ground,  as  they  are  trained  to  do  Avith  cattle; 
but  in  the  end  the  horses  dragged  the  rhino — dragged 
him  up  to  a  clump  of  thorn  trees,  where  the  cowboys 
tied  him,  properly  heeled,  with  all  the  ropes  at  hand. 
*  *  *  In  one  of  his  charges  the  rhino  made  for 
Gobbett's  camera.  The  porter  went  up  the  tree  like 
a  flash,  but  the  tree  was  so  small  there  was  not  room 
for  two  and  Gobbett  was  compelled  to  abandon  his 
camera  and  retreat.  With  an  upward  stroke  of  his 
horn  the  rhino  sent  the  apparatus  flying.  Then 
Means  succeeded  in  attracting  his  attention  and  he 
charged  the  horseman  instead.  Gobbett  picked  up 
the  debris,  found  that  the  tripod-head  was  split  clean 
in  two  as  with  an  axe,  found  the  camera  itself  un- 
damaged, found  there  was  enough  head  left  to  sup- 
port the  camera,  quickly  mounted  his  machine  again, 
and  was  just  in  time  to  catch  the  end  of  the  rhino's 
chase  after  Means.  From  one  position  to  another  the 
fight  went  on  through  the  long  hot  afternoon.  Ropes 
were  thrown  and  caught  and  broken,  mended  and 
thrown  again.  The  horses  were  pulled,  all  standing, 
one  way  and  another.  Rolls  of  films  were  used  and 
replaced  by  fresh  ones.  The  rhino  sulked  and 
stormed  and  charged  in  turn. 

*'  'Once  the  Colonel  was  nearly  caught.    There  was 


182  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

scarcely  daylight  between  his  horse's  tail  and  the  up- 
thrust  of  the  rhino's  head.  Once,  with  the  rope  on  the 
rhino's  neck,  Loveless'  saddle  turned  and  he  had  to 
jump  clear  to  avoid  a  fall.  As  the  afternoon  wore  away 
little  by  little  the  rhino  showed  signs  of  weakening. 
He  tottered  once  and  lay  down,  then  got  up  and 
charged  feebly.  The  horses  moved  him,  then  dragged 
him  inch  by  inch  to  a  clump  of  thorns  where  the  cow- 
boys tied  him  fast.'  " 

A  study  of  the  report  of  the  expedition  made  to  the 
company  by  its  manager  gives  a  very  good  idea  of 
the  proportions  of  this  job  which  Scull  assumed.  He 
had  the  task  of  buying  the  greater  part  of  the  equip- 
ment— foods,  medicines,  supplies — in  London,  of  get- 
ting it  shipped  and  seeing  that  it  all  reached  its  des- 
tination. At  Mombasa,  British  East  Africa,  he  had 
to  engage  hunters,  porters,  teamsters  and  their  ox 
teams  and  carts.  He  had  to  personally  settle  the  dis- 
putes and  grievances  of  this  varied  assortment  of 
men,  Americans,  Englishmen,  Colonists  and  native 
blacks,  which  in  itself  was  a  task  that  required  the 
firmness,  patience  and  force  of  a  general,  diplomat 
and  slave  driver,  combined. 

From  dawn  until  dark,  besides  doing  his  part  on 
the  hunt,  he  was  busy  keeping  the  safari  moving  over 
this  rough  country,  bossing  the  job  when  a  wagon 
stuck  at  a  ford  or  stalled  on  a  stiff  grade  going  over 
the  mountains.  At  night  when  others  slept,  he  had 
to  check  up  on  the  day's  work,  make  up  his  accounts, 


NAIROBI  183 

write  his  journal,  superintend  the  work  of  feeding, 
doctor  sick  men  and  animals  and  prepare  generally 
for  the  work  of  the  morrow. 

This  was  a  hard,  nerve-racking  job.  We  see  it  as 
the  sort  of  thing  Scull  was  always  trying  to  do.  He 
was  not  interested  in  ordinary  every-day  jobs  that 
people  do  in  civilized  communities.  Scull  could  have 
had  for  the  mere  asking,  an  easy  berth  in  a  dozen 
different  enterprises,  if  he  had  wanted  them!  But 
that  was  not  Scull's  gait.  He  liked  a  breath  of  civil- 
ization once  in  a  while.  He  liked  to  loaf  around  clubs 
for  a  few  weeks  as  a  break  in  his  schedule  of  things, 
and  for  the  same  reason  perhaps,  he  liked  now  and 
then  to  see  a  few  plays,  to  hear  good  music  and  study 
up  on  things  worth  while  that  had  been  done  while 
he  had  been  away.  But  for  a  steady  diet  he  much 
preferred  tough  jobs  in  out-of-the-way  places.  He 
would  much  rather,  for  instance,  settle  a  dispute  with 
a  company  of  rebellious  black  porters  or  attempt  to 
tie  up  a  fighting  mad  rhinoceros  with  rope  and  take 
his  picture,  than  to  get  all  dressed  up  and  go  out  to 
dine. 

As  brief  as  they  are,  but  expressed  in  Scull's  clear, 
precise  English,  extracts  from  his  daily  reports  in  the 
company  journal  give,  better  than  anything  else  we 
have,  a  picture  of  the  day's  work  of  this  expedition. 
The  following  paragraphs  are  taken  from  the  yellow 
pages  of  an  old  account  book  in  which  minutes  of  the 
day's  journal  appear  side  by  side  with  entries  on  pur- 


184  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

chase  and  sales  of  everything  from  rope  and  feed  bags 
to  horses  and  dogs,  medicine,  moving-picture  films, 
saddles  and  horseshoes: 

March  28th — Trekked  to  the  Last  Water.  Sent 
Means  back  to  Aggats  for  a  dog  that  refused  to  fol- 
low him  yesterday.  Took  Webb's  wagon  along  with 
us  here  to  help  over  the  bad  going.  It  will  go  back  to- 
morrow, picking  up  Fowler's  stuff  at  the  Civ  river 
where  we  met  Ulyate's  second  wagon  last  night. 
Gobbett  took  good  picture  of  wagons  crossing  the 
drift  here.    INIore  trouble.     Got  over  it. 

March  31st — Kijabe — No  time  nor  opportunity  to 
write  since  the  28th  on  account  of  trekking  continu- 
ously. Left  the  Last  Water  shortly  after  noon  on 
the  29th.  The  wagons,  Kearton,  Gobbett  and  myself 
trekked  all  night.  Means  with  the  stray  dog  caught 
us  up  soon  after  leaving  the  Last  Water,  and  he,  the 
Colonel  and  Loveless  camped  on  the  road  for  the 
night  and  caught  us  up  after  we  had  outspanned  in 
the  Rift  Valley  (which  is  part  of  the  Kedong  Valley) 
in  the  morning  on  the  30th.  On  the  30th  left  the 
outspanning  place  shortly  after  noon  and  trekked  to 
the  Rugged  Rocks  in  the  Kedong.  Found  the  valley 
very  dry  and  scarcely  any  game.  A  great  change 
since  we  were  here  last.  Ulyate  hoped  to  find  water 
in  a  hole  on  the  mountain  side  close  to  the  Rugged 
Rocks.  But  the  water  had  dried,  and  after  outspan- 
ning for  two  hours  we  went  on  again.  The  Colonel, 
the  two  boys  and  Kearton  stayed  to  spend  the  night. 
The  Colonel  wanted  to  have  a  look  at  the  country 


NAIROBI  185 

around  Semals.  So  we  planned  that  he  and  one  of 
the  boys  would  ride  to  Kijabe  by  Avay  of  Semals  on 
the  east  of  the  wagon  road,  while  the  other  with  Kear- 
ton  followed  Ulyate's  advice  and  rode  for  Kijabe 
across  country  on  the  west  of  the  road.  Eventually 
both  boys  and  Kearton  took  this  route.  They  found 
lots  of  game  on  the  side  of  a  volcanic  hill,  put  up  two 
lions  and  baved  them  for  a  time.  There  was  no 
chance  to  do  anything  else,  for  there  was  no  water  and 
the  rest  of  the  outfit  was  too  far  away  making  for 
Kijabe  as  fast  as  possible  to  get  water  for  the  oxen 
which  had  not  drunk  since  leaving  the  Last  Water  on 
the  29th.  Also  the  horses  were  prettj'^  well  done  up. 
The  Colonel  reported  nothing  found.  The  plan  now 
is  for  most  of  us  to  go  to  Nairobi  on  tomorrow 
morning's  train,  Loveless  to  see  a  doctor  about  his 
foot,  Kearton  and  Gobbett  to  develop  pictures,  some 
of  which  are  over  three  weeks  undeveloped.  Myself 
to  secure  additional  supplies,  etc.  The  Colonel 
ought  to  go  in  to  have  his  hand  looked  to,  but  up  to 
now  he  refuses.  Means'  back  is  hurting  him  and  all 
the  horses  and  dogs  are  worn  out.  We  will  leave 
Means  here  with  the  horses  and  dogs,  all  to  rest  up. 
Have  kept  Ulyate  on  at  7.50  per  day  retaining  fee. 
Have  not  told  him  about  what  the  boys  found  to-da}'' 
to  safeguard  him  against  future  contingencies.  Will 
take  the  sick  and  old  porters  with  us  and  bring  out 
fresh  ones. 

April  1st — Nairobi — Reached  here  at  noon.     The 
horse  left  in  quarantine  has  been  discharged  and  the 


186  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

one  with  the  sore  neck  is  better.  Loveless  will  in- 
spect them  to-morrow.  Loveless  saw  the  doctor.  His 
foot  is  not  bad  but  his  hand  is.  The  doctor  wants 
him  to  stay  here  till  Wednesday,  the  6th.  Going  to 
try  to  get  him  off  on  Tuesday's  train.  Ward  met  us 
at  station.  He  will  send  to  Kijabe  12  porters  on 
Saturdaj'^,  the  2nd;  and  food  for  horses  and  men  for 
10  days  on  the  4th.  Will  try  to  send  horses  by  same 
train.  Both  the  dogs  the  Colonel  left  here  have  died. 
Ward  is  trying  to  arrange  a  show  for  the  Duke  of 
Conaught  on  the  21st.  He  also  wants  us  to  go  to 
Kapiti  plains  before  the  rains  set  in.  He  thinks  we 
have  a  fortnight  yet  to  spare.  That  will  just  give 
us  time  to  get  well  rested,  start  hunting  at  Kijabe 
on  the  6th  and  after  a  week  there,  which  ought  to  be 
sufficient,  to  go  to  Kapiti  plains  before  the  rains. 
This  provided  Loveless  can  go  on  the  5th.  Ward 
promises  lion  on  Kapiti  plains,  but  there  is  horse 
sickness  and  ticks  there.  Kearton's  chemicals  have 
not  come,  must  buy  some  here.  Mrs.  Kearton  wants 
to  go  with  us.  Must  try  to  prevent  this  without  put- 
ting Kearton's  back  up. 

April  6th  — Black  Reef  Camp — Trekked  out  into 
the  Kedong  Valley  a  few  miles  to  a  dry  camp.  Went 
hunting  beyond  at  the  place  where  the  boys  and 
Kearton  saw  the  lions.  Loveless  nearly  got  caught 
by  a  rhino  and  had  to  shoot  him.  Left  him  there  for 
bait,  also  some  zebra.  Saw  some  lion  tracks.  Plan 
an  early  start  for  the  morning. 

April  7th — Spent  the  morning  hunting.    The  only 


NAIROBI  187 

incident  of  the  day  being  when  Kearton  and  Ulyate, 
stationed  high  in  the  rocks  of  the  ridge,  saw  a  lioness 
on  a  far  rise.  Ulyate  notified  us  in  the  plain  and  we 
tried  to  hold  her  up,  but  she  got  away.  The  dogs 
chased  a  wild  cat  and  caught  it.  Planned  another 
early  start  to-morrow. 

April  8th — Started  from  camp  at  dawn.  Loveless 
and  Means  rode  away  to  the  south  to  take  up  a  posi- 
tion near  the  lower  end  of  the  big  donga  about  four 
miles  away  to  cut  off  any  lion  from  that  retreat.  The 
Colonel  went  with  the  dogs  to  the  dead  rhino  to  pick 
up  any  trail  there.  Kearton,  Ulyate  and  myself 
were  stationed  high  in  the  rocks  of  the  lava  ridge 
with  a  glass.  If  we  found  a  lion  with  the  glasses  we 
would  light  a  fire  in  the  rocks.  We  were  to  keep 
sight  of,  if  possible,  both  the  Colonel  and  the  boys.  It 
was  just  getting  light  enough  to  see  about  5:30, 
when  we  made  out  the  Colonel  approaching  the  rhino 
carcass  about  II/2  miles  away.  He  dismounted  at  the 
carcass,  and  presently  the  trail  running  at  right  an- 
gles to  our  line  of  vision,  the  dogs  made  a  wide 
bend  toward  us  and  at  the  end  came  right  along  the 
base  of  the  cliff.  Ulyate  joined  the  Colonel  and 
Kearton  and  I  followed  with  the  camera  boys.  By 
the  time  we  rounded  the  next  out  jutting  spur  of  the 
cliff  the  hunt  was  out  of  sight.  Ulyate's  gun  bearer 
struggling  up  the  hillside  where  it  was  less  steep 
gave  us  the  direction.  At  the  top  we  halted.  There 
was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the  lava  blocks  and  scrub, 
but  we  could  hear  the  hounds  intermingled  with  the 


188  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

roar  of  a  lion  somewhere.    By  this  time  Means  and 
Loveless  had  come  up  from  the    donga.      We    saw 
Means  making  for  a  further  jutty  and  hurried  down 
the  hillside  to  join  him.     We  had  heard  two  shots 
fired  which  means  'gather.'    Then  Loveless  called  to 
us  from  the  rocks  above  and  we  left  our  horses  and 
clambered  up  on  top  of  the  ridge  to  find  a  lioness 
bayed  by  the  dogs  and  the  Colonel,  Loveless  and  Ul- 
yate  standing  by.     Means  joined  us  a  minute  later. 
The  lava  blocks,  broken  ground,  thorn  trees  and  thick 
scrub  made  all   manoeuvring   out   of  the   question. 
A  minute  or  so  later  she  bolted  from  that  place  to  a 
worse  place.     We  worked  on  her  with  fire  crackers 
and  the  dogs  and  tried  to  rope  her  but  without  suc- 
cess.   After  a  half  an  hour  of  this  she  bolted  again  to 
another  crevice  on  the  side  of  the  ridge.     Again  we 
went  to  work  with  crackers,  dogs  and  rope.     This 
place  was  the  end  of  the  lava  rock  ridge,  and  the  ridge 
fell  away  in  a  series  of  crevices  and  lava  blocks  al- 
most perpendicularly  to  the  plain  150  feet  below.    It 
was  so  steep  that  only  here  and  there  could  a  horse 
be  led  up  or  down.    It  was  here  that  two  or  three  of 
the  dogs  got  badly  hurt.    From  this  place  she  shifted 
to  the  plain  below,  making  straight  for  the  big  donga 
about  a  half  a  mile  away.     Kearton's  and  my  horse 
were  in  the  plain.    The  Colonel  and  Loveless  jumped 
on  them  with  the  dogs  ahead  at  the  lioness'  heels. 
She  crouched  behind  a  bush  and  waited,  but  the  dogs 
drove  her  on  and  she  stopped  again  on  the  very  edge 
of  the  donga.     Here  she  stopped  to  fight.     There 


NAIROBI  189 

was  a  gully  leading  down  into  the  donga  just  here. 
The  cameras  went  into  action  across  the  gully.     She 
charged  Means  and  nearly    caught    him,    and    then 
charged  the  Colonel  and  nearly  caught  him.    In  both 
instances  the  horses  after  thej'^  got  started,  ran  away 
from  her.     This    performance    concluded,    she    took 
refuge  behind  another  bush.     Means  galloped  past 
and  roped  her  round  the  neck,  but  her  neck  was  so 
short  that  the  rope  slipped  off  her  head.     Loveless 
tried  with  the  same  result.     Then  she  fled  into  the 
bottom  of  the  donga  and  hid  under  some  thick  scrub. 
They  set  fire  to  the    scrub,    set    off    crackers    and 
dragged  the  scrub  away  from  her  with  a  forked  stick 
at  the  end  of  a  rope.    At  the  end  of  an  hour  of  this 
Loveless  could  throw  a  rope  at  her.    He  did  so  and 
she  charged  him  and  nearly  got  him,  and  then  ran 
off  do\vn  the  donga  with  the  hunt  in  full  cry  behind. 
Again  she  stopped  in  some  tall  grass  in  the  very  bot- 
tom of  the  lowest  ditch.    Loveless  threw  a  rope  that 
stuck  in  the  grass  over  her  head  and  the  Colonel  rode 
alongside  of  the  ditch  and  with  a  pole  shoved  the 
noose  down  under  her  chin.      She    sprang   at    him, 
through  the  noose,  and  Loveless  with  the  rope  over 
the  branch  of  a  tree,  hauled  taut  just  in  time  to  catch 
her  by  the  last  hind  leg  as  she  went  through  it.    This 
enabled  them  to  swing  her  up  in  the  tree,  and  they 
tied  her  and  muzzled  her  and  let  her  rest  and  brought 
her  into  camp  on  a  cradle,  first  the  horses  pulling  her 
out  of  the  donga,  then  the  oxen.    The  dogs  were  doc- 
tored, and  one  with  a  broken  leg  was  sent  down  to 


190  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

Nairobi.  The  lioness  was  chained  to  a  tree  outside 
of  camp.  Loveless  hurt  his  thumb  and  Means  hurt 
his  back  again.  Kearton  took  900  ft.,  Gobbett,  who 
arrived  from  Nairobi  toward  the  end  100,  and  my- 
self 400.  (This  lioness  was  carted  to  the  coast  and 
shipped  to  New  York.  It  is  at  this  writing  still  alive 
and  on  exhibition  in  the  Bronx  Zoological  Gardens.) 

April  19th — Roped  kongoni.*  One  kongoni 
charged  Means  and  got  his  horse  a  bad  one  in  the 
groin.  Took  him  to  a  vet  as  soon  as  possible  and 
had  him  sewed  up.  If  blood  poisoning  does  not  set 
in  he  may  recover.  Fixed  up  Colonel's  passage  for 
25th  and  sent  wire  to  Bird.  De\  eloping  progressing 
favorably.  Deposited  four  boxes  of  lilm,  contents 
unknown. 

April  20th — Means'  horse  doing  well.  Deposited 
in  bank  7  boxes  of  film.  Sent  wire  to  Bird.  Wrote 
letter  to  Bird  concerning  passages. 

April  21st — Means'  horse  taken  bad.  The  chances 
of  his  living  very  small. 

April  22nd — Received  and  sent  cables  to  Bird  con- 
cerning article.  Telegraphed  in  K's  name  to  Cole 
concerning  horses.     Sat  up  last  night  with  Means' 

horse. 

April  23rd — Busy  with  general  affairs  and  Means' 
horse  all  day.  Kearton's  horse  has  got  tick  fever. 
Sent  vet  to  attend  to  him.  Received  cable  from  Bird 
concerning  authority. 

April  24th — Saw  Colonel  off  on  train  for  Mom- 
basa.   Means'  horse  doing  well.    Kearton's  about  the 

■  Kongoni — Swahili  name  for  hartebeest. 


*  f  ^ 


NAIROBI  191 

same.     "Dollar"  reported  having  tick  fever  and  all 
right  this  evening. 

April  25th — Loveless  and  INIeans  left  today  to  catch 
French  steamer  at  Mombasa  Thursday.  Sold  Means' 
horse  for  25  pounds  to  Capt.  Ward.  Finished  up  the 
work  on  the  films,  took  the  boxes  out  of  the  bank, 
and  repacked  the  films  in  my  uniform  case.  There 
are  42  tins  in  all,  11  A  and  31  B,  totalling  approxi- 
mately 9015  feet.  Sent  wire  to  Bird  on  transporta- 
tion of  films  and  shipping  of  lioness.  Received  note 
from  Fowler.  Let  ]Means  have  one  of  the  new  sad- 
dles in  place  of  his  old  one  which  he  strained  in  the 
rhino  fight. 

April  26th — Deposited  in  bank  42  tins  of  films,  31 
B,  11  A,  in  my  uniform  box.  Kearton  and  Gobbett 
left  for  their  lion  spearing.  Visited  the  horses  at 
Elkinton's  and  K's  horse  doing  nicely  and  the  rest 
all  right.  Brought  some  of  the  equipment  to  Nair- 
obi to-day. 

"None  of  Skipper  Scull's  many  adventures  could 
have  been  better  designed  to  bring  out  his  many  pe- 
culiar and  admirable  characteristics  than  that  with 
Buffalo  Jones,"  writes  one  of  the  promoters  of  this 
trip.  "I  had  often  heard  of  Scull  but  never  met  him 
until  we  planned  to  go  to  British  East  Africa  to- 
gether. It  was  one  day  in  December,  1909,  just  after 
my  brother  and  I  had  decided  to  go  to  Africa  on  a 
hunting  trip,  that  Mr.  Charles  Sumner  Bird  of  Bos- 
ton walked  into  my  office  in  New  York  and  began  to 
talk  about  'liuffalo  Jones'  and  his  ambitions  to  try 


192  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  same  methods  on  big  game  in  Africa  that  he  had 
used  on  the  western  plains  and  in  California.  Mr. 
Bird  declared  he  was  prej)ared  to  finance  Colonel 
Jones  if  I  would  take  charge  of  the  party.  This  I 
declined  to  do  but  suggested  that  I  help  organize 
the  expedition  and  get  it  started  for  Nairobi  and  that 
Mr.  Bird  have  some  one  else  to  whom  I  could  there 
tuiTi  over  the  entire  command  and  then  I  could  devote 
myself  to  a  trij)  already  planned  with  my  brother. 
In  a  day  or  two  Mr.  Bird  called  again  and  said  that 
he  had  seen  Guy  Scull  and  that  he  had  consented  to 
go  under  the  conditions.  The  choice  of  Scull  was 
most  fortunate.  In  fact  the  project  would  have 
failed  entirely  but  for  his  patience,  courage  and  ten- 
acity. I  do  not  know  anyone  who  would  have  carried 
it  off  quite  as  well  as  he  did. 

"The  'Skipper's'  character  was  well  illustrated  by 
the  kit  with  which  he  started;  one  small  valise  for  a 
six  months'  trip  to  the  Equator  was  all  he  needed, 
for  beside  the  thin  grey  suit  and  the  overcoat  he  wore 
on  leaving  New  York,  he  took  only  a  pair  of  old 
khaki  breeches,  an  army  shirt,  a  heavy  pair  of  shoes, 
a  few  collars,  a  very  small  supply  of  linen,  a  razor 
and  the  inevitable  tooth  brush.  I  don't  remember 
seeing  a  hair  brush,  though  I  believe  he  did  have  a 
comb  somewhere  in  the  kit.  Certainly  no  one  ever 
cultivated  more  successfully  the  art  of  traveling 
light. 

"Another  characteristic  became  evident  at  once. 
He  had  the  journalistic  point  of  view.    For  years  I 


NAIROBI  193 

had  been  reading  about  xVfrican  game  and  shooting 
and  took  with  me  several  books  on  the  subject  as  well 
as  a  Swahili  phrase-book  and  dictionary.  The  Skip- 
per scorned  all  this  literature  and  did  not  open  a  book 
all  the  way  out.  His  explanation  was  that  he  wanted 
to  have  an  absolutely  open  mind  and  to  form  his  own 
impressions. 

"Early  in  the  trip  it  became  evident  that  the  Skip- 
per had  an  inexhaustible  capacity  for  silence  and  a 
dry  but  never  failing  sense  of  humour,  coupled  with 
a  contempt  for  all  conventions  and  a  bulldog  deter- 
mination to  carry  through  anything  he  started  out  to 
do. 

"I  used  to  study  his  face  carefully  in  those  and 
later  hours  that  we  spent  together.  The  tense,  almost 
tortured  expression  of  it  interested  me  tremendously. 
I  had  the  baffling  feeling  that  I  had  seen  that  face 
somewhere  else,  but  could  not  tell  where.  One  day 
it  flashed  across  me  that  there  was  an  extraordinary 
likeness  to  the  face  of  Dante,  particularly  as  we  know 
it  in  that  well-known  bronze  bust  so  often  repro- 
duced. I  wonder  if  others  of  his  friends  have  noticed 
that  likeness  or  was  it  just  a  freak  of  my  fancy  and 
imagination?  The  shape  of  the  head  was  much  the 
same,  the  same  forehead,  nose  and  high  cheeks.  The 
same  arched  eyebrows  and  the  same  expression  of 
eyes  and  mouth.  They  had  both  been  through  'In- 
ferno' and  both  showed  it. 

"But  the  Skipper  did  not  always  look  as  solemn 
as  Dante.     An  expedition  so  fantastic  as  ours  had 


194  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

its  many  funny  moments,  most  of  them  utterly  lost 
on  the  Colonel,  but  always  appreciated  to  the  full  by 
the  Skipper.  I  remember  one  day  in  London  when 
we  were  collecting  equipmeni  we  had  taken  the  Col- 
onel into  an  iron  mongers  to  buy  some  chains,  etc. 
The  old  man  was  more  than  usually  erratic  that  day. 
Suddenly  he  flew  into  a  sort  of  inspired  rage  and 
began  shouting  at  the  proprietor  that  he  must  have 
an  enormous  pair  of  iron  tongs  made  so  that  their 
ends  would  form,  when  closed,  a  circular  band  some 
six  or  eight  inches  in  diameter. 

"  *What  do  you  want  to  do  with  them,  Sir?'  said 
the  puzzled  shopkeeper. 

"  'I  want  to  muzzle  lions  with  them,'  said  the 
Colonel. 

"Imagine  the  picture.  I  looked  over  at  the  Skip- 
per whose  face  was  a  study.  He  gave  the  old  man 
one  look,  drew  back  his  lips  on  one  side  and  said  so 
plainly  without  words,  'What  the  hell  is  the  old  guy 
going  to  say  next!'  In  fact  the  Skipper  could  say 
more  without  uttering  a  word  than  any  man  I  ever 
met. 

"The  Skipper  was  exceedingly  patient  with  the 
Colonel  who  grew  more  and  more  difficult  as  the  ex- 
pedition progressed.  I  never  saw  him  lose  his  tem- 
per under  any  provocation.  Yet  he  never  failed  to 
give  his  opinion  bluntly  and  decidedly  whenever  it 
was  necessary. 

"On  the  steamer  from  Marseilles  to  Mombasa  the 
Skipper  and  I  shared  a  stateroom.    I  remember  how 


NAIROBI  195 

very  early  every  morning  I  could  hear  him  crawl 
out  of  his  berth,  and  then  his  spare  figure  would 
move  quietly  across  the  room,  and  having  found  a 
cigarette,  he  would  steal  back  to  bed  and  to  the  smoke 
which  he  enjoyed  most  of  all  the  day. 

"He  was  a  delightful  traveling  companion,  silent 
but  sympathetic,  undemonstrative  but  likable  in  the 
extreme.  In  the  weeks  we  spent  together  we  got  to 
know  each  other  well.  I  formed  a  great  affection  for 
him  and  did  not  hesitate  to  let  him  know  it.  He  in 
his  way  liked  me,  I  think,  but  it  was  characteristic 
of  him  never  to  show  it  by  words. 

"At  Nairobi  many  complications  arose  with  dis- 
couraging treachery  on  the  part  of  some  of  our  men, 
and  many  minor  difficulties  about  the  equipment. 
The  Skipper  was  always  on  the  job,  always  patient, 
always  resourceful.  However,  it  was  when  the  out- 
fit got  really  away  into  the  back  country  and  things 
began  to  happen  thick  and  fast;  when  the  Colonel's 
temper  broke  down  under  the  tropical  conditions  and 
his  vagaries  grew  more  and  more  exasperating,  that 
the  Skipper  showed  to  best  advantage. 

"Always  indifferent  to  his  personal  appearance  he 
never  showed  lack  of  interest  in  what  was  going  on 
and  always  managed  to  do  or  say  the  right  thing  in 
the  trying  moments.  When  he  left  the  railway  he 
had  adopted  a  brown  topi  helmet  as  headgear.  His 
khaki  shirt,  army  breeches  and  heavy  shoes  made  up 
the  rest  of  his  kit.  He  used  to  wear  the  helmet  at 
a  characteristic  angle,  and  seldom  if  ever  wore  any 


196  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

leggins.  The  breeches  were  usually  unbuttoned  be- 
low the  knees,  and  gave  him  a  casual  air  that  helped 
to  make  many  a  difficult  situation  laughable  rather 
than  serious.  On  the  hottest  day  he  looked  perfectly 
cool  and  in  the  cool  of  the  early  morning  camp  break- 
fast, he  used  to  look  almost  blue.  Huddling  his  shoul- 
ders he  would  stamp  around  the  camp  beating  his 
arms  as  though  it  were  a  March  morning  at  home. 

"His  silence  was  still  his  outstanding  characteristic 
of  manner,  but  whenever  he  spoke  he  always  had 
something  pithy  to  say. 

"His  observations  on  women  were  always  amusing. 
Of  the  average  woman  he  had  a  rather  low  opinion. 
'Women  is  queer,'  was  his  way  of  summing  it  all  up. 

"The  success  of  the  'Buffalo  Jones'  outfit  in  roping 
and  photographing  lion,  rhino  and  other  less  impor- 
tant game  is  well  known.  In  my  opinion  the  Skipper 
has  never  been  given  half  enough  credit  for  his  share 
in  their  success.  With  anyone  else  in  charge  I  don't 
know  how  the  outfit  would  have  stayed  together  a 
week.  It  was  characteristic  of  him  to  finish  the  job 
and  then  say  nothing  about  it. 

"I  am  glad  of  this  chance  to  pay  him  a  tribute  of 
respect  and  affection.    He  was  very  much  of  a  man." 


1!)I0 


Chapter  XIV 
MEXICAN   BORDER— 1910 

There  is  a  world  of  trouble  in  a  line  one  thousand 
miles  long,  especially  when  this  line  is  a  government 
border  and  that  border  happens  to  be  the  Rio  Grande. 
Scull  just  naturally  drifted  to  this  trouble  zone.  He 
arrived  strangely  enough  when  the  Diaz-Madero 
revolution  was  smouldering  on  one  side  of  the  line 
and  on  the  other  JNIexican  and  American  gun-run- 
ners, farmers,  cattlemen,  settlers,  soldiers  and  con- 
tractors' agents  waiting  feverishly  for  someone  to 
touch  a  match  to  the  bonfire.  How  Scull  got  a  com- 
mission in  the  Department  of  Justice  and  drew  this 
particular  assignment  none  of  his  friends  seem  to 
know.  He  landed  down  there,  however,  early  in 
1910,  and  worked  in  his  inconspicuous  manner  up  and 
down  the  line  for  upwards  of  two  years.  The  only 
reference  to  any  part  of  this  chapter  of  his  life  among 
his  papers  is  a  set  of  correspondence  with  his  supe- 
riors at  Washington  protesting  with  his  usual  perse- 
verance against  the  official  red  tape  that  compelled 
revealing  the  identity  and  activities  of  his  men  by 
making  them  itemize  their  expense  accounts.  Copies 
of  his  reports,  his  journal  and  his  note-books  he 
either  destroyed  or  turned  in  to  the  Government. 
When  the  revolution  temporarily  subsided,  things  bc- 

197 


198  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

came  too  quiet  for  him  and  he  resigned  and  came 
North  again. 

But  it  is  easy  for  us  to  imagine  this  angular,  grim, 
silent  man  mixing  incognito  in  the  conspiracies 
hatched  in  the  border  towns ;  frequenting  the  resorts 
of  the  rough  characters  who  gathered  there;  making 
friends  with  Mexican  and  American  outlaws,  riding 
post  in  cold  rainy  nights  or  baking  hot  days.  This 
was  the  big  game  he  liked  so  well,  matching  his 
brains  against  the  sharp  wits  of  the  runners  of  con- 
traband; bluffing  a  lone  hand  against  a  pack.  It  is 
more  difficult  to  imagine  the  mild-mannered  Skipper 
pulling  a  gun,  but  those  who  have  seen  Scull  togged 
out  in  a  flannel  shirt,  khaki  trousers,  and  a  slouch 
hat  know  how  well  he  could  make  up  and  play  the 
part. 

They  tell  a  story  on  Scull  at  the  Harvard  Club 
that  is  no  doubt  true  but  I  cannot  vouch  for  it  be- 
cause no  one  seems  to  know  its  origin,  yet  it  sounds 
plausible  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  a  desperate 
adventure  set  in  comedy,  and  the  Skipper  was  at  his 
best  when  drawing  a  picture  of  grim  humor. 

It  seems  that  when  Scull  first  arrived  on  the  scene 
he  worked  alone;  for  one  reason  because  he  pre- 
ferred to,  and  for  another  that  it  was  difficult  for  a 
stranger  to  get  any  assistants  on  whom  he  could  ab- 
solutely depend  in  a  pinch.  So  when  a  certain  "bad 
man"  from  Mexico  "sloaped"  over  the  border  and 
secretly  began  outfitting  a  pack  train  for  toting  arms 
and  ammunition  across  the  Rio  Grande,  the  Skipper 


MEXICAN  BORDER  199 

had  to  do  his  own  "tailing,"  work  out  his  own  plans 
and  make  his  own  capture.    This  "bad  man"  openly 
sported  a  gun  with  many  notches  on  its  handle.    He 
was  known  as  a  "killer"  and  let  severely  alone.    He 
was,  moreover,  a  fast  worker  and  soon  had  his  expe- 
dition organized.     Scull  too    late    realized    that    he 
couldn't  stop  him  single-handed.     The  assistance  he 
wired  for  either  didn't  come  or  he  could  not  raise  a 
local  force  quick  enough,  because  one  dark  night  the 
"bad  man"  pulled  his  freight  and  the  Skipper  barely 
had  time  to  press  into  instant  service  a  couple  of  local 
Government  men,  saddle  up,  and  take  it  on  the  jump 
across  country  to  try  and  intercept  his  quarry  on  the 
road.    He  succeeded  in  getting   between   the    pack 
train  and  the  river,  posted  his  men  on  either  side  of 
the  trail  and  waited.    Soon  up  came  the  gun-runners, 
with  the  "bad  man"  riding  at  the  head  of  the  column. 
Scull  pulled  his  horse  across  the  trail,  threw  his  gun 
on  the  Mexican  and  yelled  for  him  to  throw  up  his 
hands. 

"I  yelled  so  goshdarncd  loud,"  the  Skipper  is  said 
to  have  told  the  story,  "that  I  must  have  scared  the 
whole  party,  for  not  only  his  Greaser  friends  unani- 
mously turned  and  beat  it  back  to  town,  but  my  two 
men  also,  and  there  we  two  sat — the  'bad  man'  with 
his  hands  pointing  straight  up  to  Heaven;  me  point- 
ing the  gun  and  shaking  like  I  had  the  palsy.  But  he 
kept  his  hands  up,  all  right,  and  I  frisked  him  for  his 
artillery.  Then  I  told  him  to  take  his  hands  down. 
Nothing  doing. 


200  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

"  'Drop'  em,  Pronto!'  I  yelled. 

"He  only  stuck  *em  up  the  higher.  I  shoved  my 
gun  in  the  holster  and  made  signs  for  him  to  drop 
'em,  but  he  only  shook  his  head,  and  darn  me  if  I 
didn't  have  to  reach  up  and  pull  'em  down.  The  'bad 
man'  was  shaking  worse  than  I  was." 

With  the  increasing  activity  up  and  down  the  line, 
Government  interest  became  more  and  more  centered 
in  this  section  and  Scull's  independent  command, 
much  to  his  disgust,  was  taken  over  by  a  superior 
who  suddenly  turned  up  one  day  in  the  person  of 
Marshall  Eberstein,  an  old  Secret  Service  man  and 
a  character. 

This  man,  now  the  Chief  of  Police  of  Omaha, 
Nebraska,  had  worked  four  years  under  Chief  John 
E.  Wilkie  of  the  Secret  Service  before  being  trans- 
ferred to  the  new  Bureau  of  Investigation  of  the 
Department  of  Justice,  organized  by  Stanley  W. 
Finch  in  1908,  and  assigned  as  Chief  of  the  Chicago 
Division.  Eberstein  and  Scull  eventually  became 
warm  friends,  but  according  to  the  former,  the  Skip- 
per at  first  openly  resented  his  assumption  of  author- 
ity in  what  Scull  proudly  called  his  own  little  job. 

Eberstein  was  in  Chicago  when  he  received  a  wire 
from  Chief  Finch  at  El  Paso  to  report  immediately 
at  San  Antonio  to  take  charge  of  the  Bureau  of 
Texas.  Eberstein  duly  arrived  and  wired  Finch  for 
further  orders.  Finch  replied  that  it  was  necessary 
to  have  an  experienced  man  on  the  job  at  "San 
Antone*'  where  one  Guy  Hamilton  Scull  was  tem- 


MEXICAN    BORDER  201 

porarily  in  charge,  and  to  go  there  and  take  over  the 
office.  This  peremptory  order  was  what  offended 
Scull.  Nevertheless  Eberstein  went  straight  to  the 
Federal  Building  in  "San  Antone"  and  introduced 
himself. 

"I  recall  Scull,"  he  writes,  "as  a  striking  looking 
figTire  with  light  hair,  cut  pompadour  (it  probably 
was  one  of  the  Skipper's  skin-tight  haircuts),  light 
blue  eyes,  and  very  much  surprised  and  disappointed 
to  see  me.  His  sleeves  were  rolled  up  to  the  elbow 
and  he  was  writing  notes  in  a  little  personal  book. 
He  informed  me  in  no  uncertain  manner  that  he  had 
come  to  'San  Antone'  with  Chief  Finch  from  Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  with  the  understanding  that  he  was  to 
be  left  in  charge  of  Texas  during  the  Mexican  trou- 
ble. I  found  Mr.  Scull,  however,  a  gentleman,  pol- 
ished and  well  educated,  and  after  explaining  to  him, 
to  the  best  of  my  ability,  why  the  Government  saw 
fit  to  make  such  changes  at  times,  I  requested  him  to 
stay  on  the  job  until  the  trouble  in  Mexico  was  over. 

"He  thought  the  matter  over  for  two  or  three  days 
— during  which  time  I  entertained  him  on  one  or 
two  occasions  with  dinner  parties — and  made  up  his 
mind  to  remain  with  me. 

"All  this,  of  course,  is  just  a  preliminary,  leading 
up  to  my  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Scull. 

"Mr.  Scull  was  always  ready  and  willing  when  I 
gave  him  an  order  to  go  to  any  part  of  the  country  on 
Government  work  and  do  the  best  he  could.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  report  he  furnished  the  Department,  I 


202  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

noticed  that  he  always  kept  a  personal  note-book  on 
hand,  and  as  far  as  I  know,  no  one  else  ever  saw  it. 
If  that  book  could  be  secured  today,  I  have  no  doubt 
but  what  it  would  be  very  valuable  to  his  friends,  but 
of  course  I  do  not  know  where  it  could  be  found. 
(This  book,  like  all  other  Government  or  State  con- 
fidential documents,  Scull  never  showed  to  anyone 
save  his  superiors.) 

"On  one  occasion  I  detailed  Mr.  Scull  to  proceed 
to  some  distant  part  of  the  border,  where  it  would  be 
necessary  for  him  to  remain  two  or  three  weeks.  On 
his  return  he  came  into  my  office  in  San  Antonio  and 
told  me,  in  a  very  modest  way,  that  he  had  been  stop- 
ping at  the  St.  Anthony  Hotel,  and  that  when  he  had 
left  on  his  last  detail,  he  had  forgotten  to  check  out  of 
the  hotel.  Now  the  landlord  had  held  him  for  the 
full  amount  of  the  bill,  something  like  $3  or  $4  a  day. 
I  remarked  that  I  thought  that  kind  of  a  room  was 
most  too  good  a  room  for  a  special  agent  to  use  (for 
his  salary  was,  I  think,  $4  or  $5  per  day,  and  sub- 
sistence, which  of  course,  including  meals  and  room 
rent,  was  not  supposed  to  exceed  $4  per  day).  He 
only  ansAvered  that  he  always  liked  to  stay  in  a  good 
room.  I  mention  this  incident,  for  I  want  you  to  see 
later  how  it  came  out.  I  told  Mr.  Scull  that  I,  too, 
was  stopping  at  the  St.  Anthony  and  knew  Swear- 
ington,  the  landlord,  and  would  see  what  I  could  do 
for  him.  Mr.  Swearington  kindly  consented  to  split 
the  bill,  so  Scull  only  had  to  pay  half  price  while  he 
was  away. 


MEXICAN    BORDER  203 

*'Some  time  about  March  or  April,  1911,  informa- 
tion came  to  me  that  at  Sanderson,  Texas,  a  young 
army  was  forming  for  the  purpose  of  crossing  the  Rio 
Grande  River  into  Mexico  and  fighting  the  Diaz 
Government.  I  immediately  wrote  the  Department 
at  Washington,  giving  them  this  information,  and  as 
it  was  my  duty  to  detect  and  bring  to  justice  vio- 
lators of  the  neutrality  laws,  I  directed  Mr.  Scull 
and  another  agent,  Clyatt,  whose  home  at  that  time 
was  Lakeland,  Florida,  to  dress  in  old  clothes  and 
proceed  to  Sanderson,  where  they  were  to  join  this 
young  army,  and  keep  me  advised  on  what  was  doing. 
They  did  so.  and  I  soon  learned  the  information  was 
correct,  and  that  this  army  would  probably  be  ready 
in  a  few  days  to  invade  Mexico. 

"Scull  and  Clyatt  were  instructed  to  write  me  no 
letters,  but  to  send  everything  by  wire,  using  the 
Department  code  for  that  purpose,  which  they  did 
faithfully  and  regularly,  working  their  way  to  dif- 
ferent stations  on  the  Southern  Pacific  line  in  order 
to  do  so.  These  cipher  telegrams  were  absolutely 
unreadable  to  anyone  not  having  the  code. 

"This  attracted  the  attention  of  one  Robert  Dow, 
who  at  that  time  was  Collector  of  Customs  at  Eaffle 
Pass,  Texas.  Previous  to  our  coming,  he  had  been 
given,  more  or  less,  full  charge  in  handling  neutrality 
matters,  and  the  telegrams  being  sent  to  me  at  'San 
Antone'  aroused  his  jealousy  to  such  an  extent  that 
he  wrote  me  a  letter,  informing  me  that  he  had  rea- 
sons to  believe  I  had  two  men  at  Sanderson  and  other 


204  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

points,  who  were  interfering  with  his  business,  and 
that  in  the  future  he  wanted  all  my  men  (including 
myself)  to  report  to  him  daily  on  what  I  was  doing 
along  the  border.  I  paid  no  attention  to  this  letter 
except  to  incorporate  it  in  my  daily  report  to  Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  for  that  day. 

"Five  or  six  days  later  came  another  letter  from 
him,  demanding  that  myself  and  my  men  report  im- 
mediately to  him,  daily,  as  to  what  we  were  doing. 
I  paid  no  attention  to  this  second  communication  ex- 
cept to  do  with  it  as  I  did  with  the  first,  incorporate 
it,  without  comment,  in  my  report  to  Washington  for 
that  day. 

"In  the  meantime,  Dow  had  used  every  effort  to 
ascertain  from  Scull  and  Clyatt  what  they  were  do- 
ing, but  of  course  learned  nothing.  About  two  weeks 
following  the  receipt  of  the  last  letter,  Mr.  Dow  was 
announced  in  my  outer  office.  On  being  admitted, 
he  proceeded  to  ask  my  most  humble  apology,  not 
only  mine,  but  of  Mr.  Scull  and  Mr.  Clyett  for  the 
action  he  had  taken  in  the  matter.  I  take  it  he  had 
heard  something  from  Washington. 

"About  this  time,  things  began  taking  definite 
shape  at  Sanderson  so  I  went  to  the  General  in  com- 
mand of  the  United  States  army  at  Fort  Sam  Hous- 
ton and  told  him  what  was  going  on  at  Sanderson; 
that  I  expected  any  day  the  expedition  to  start  to 
Mexico,  and  asked  for  soldiers  to  assist  in  capturing 
them  when  they  started  toward  the  Rio  Grande 
River.     The  General  himself  was   a   very   pleasant 


MEXICAN    BORDER  205 

agreeable  man,  as  most  of  those  men  are.  After  giv- 
ing him  the  details  he  immediately  called  one  of  his 
ojfficers  at  Eagle  Pass,  and  instructed  him  to  arrange 
with  the  Southern  Pacific  R.  R.  Company  to  keep  an 
engine  steamed  up  with  two  or  three  coaches  on  the 
track  at  Eagle  Pass,  subject  to  his  (the  General's) 
orders.  He  told  me  that  when  I  was  ready  for  action 
to  let  him  know. 

"The  matter  ran  along  for  several  days  after  that 
as  no  one  on  the  border  is  ever  in  a  hurry,  and  I  began 
to  get  nervous,  fearing  I  had  been  in  too  big  a  hurry 
in  going  to  the  General.  However,  in  about  two 
weeks  I  received  a  cipher  telegram,  one  morning; 
from  the  boys,  saying  that  the  expedition  would  move 
that  night  toward  the  river.  I  immediately  went  to 
Camp  Sam  Houston,  informed  the  General,  and  he 
directed  the  officers  at  Eagle  Pass  to  take  forty  or 
fifty  men,  board  the  special  train,  detrain  six  miles 
east  of  Sanderson,  detour  between  there  and  the  river, 
and  capture  the  expedition. 

"This  programme  was  successfully  carried  out  and 
at  11  o'clock  that  night  they  captured  the  entire  ex- 
pedition a  short  distance  from  the  river;  something 
like  150  men,  200  or  300  rifles,  100  side  arms,  350,000 
rounds  of  ammunition,  tents,  hospital  supplies  and 
the  officers.  Not  a  single  man  escaped.  We  even 
captured  Scull  and  Clyatt! 

"The  entire  expedition  was  brought  in  on  the  spe- 
cial train,  the  prisoners  being  left  at  Eagle  Pass, 
where  they  necessarily  would  have  a  hearing  before 


206  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  U.  S.  Commissioner.  A  few  days  later  the  cap- 
tured paraphernalia  was  brought  to  San  Antonio  and 
stored  in  the  Federal  Building.  I,  of  course,  notified 
Chief  Finch,  who  in  turn  notified  Attorney  General 
Wickersham,  who  personally  sent  us  a  telegram  of 
congratulation  for  the  splendid  work  done  in  this 
case,  and  for  which  all  credit  was  due  to  Scull  and 
Clyatt,  and  the  splendid  co-operation  of  the  United 
States  army. 

"About  a  week  or  ten  days  later,  I  received  a  tele- 
phone call  from  the  landlord  of  the  Menger  Hotel, 
telling  me  that  there  was  a  delegation  of  gentlemen 
there  who  would  like  to  see  me  at  the  hotel.  A  short 
time  later  I  called  at  the  hotel  and  was  confronted  by 
a  coterie  of  war  correspondents,  among  them  Ritchie 
of  the  New  York  Sun,  Jimmie  Hare  of  Collier's 
Weekly,  and  others  whose  names  I  do  not  recall.  Mr. 
Ritchie  acted  as  spokesman,  and  began  by  asking  me 
if  Guy  Scull  worked  for  me.  I  replied  that  he  did 
not.  He  was  working  for  the  U.  S.  Government  un- 
der my  direction.  Ritchie  then  asked  me  if  I  knew 
anything  of  Scull's  past  record.  I  told  them  I  knew 
nothing  whatever  of  his  record  before  he  entered  the 
service  of  the  Government.  They  inquired  his  part 
in  the  recent  job  at  Sanderson,  and  I  replied  that  he 
was  the  leading  spirit.  Ritchie  then  proceeded  to  tell 
me  a  few  things  about  Scull.  He  certainly  did  spin  a 
yarn.  I  remember  only  part  of  it,  but  it  left  me  flab- 
bergasted. He  said  Scull  had  been  a  war  correspon- 
dent for  one  of  the  New  York  papers,  and  that  he  was 


J 


MEXICAN    BORDER  207 

with  him  all  through  the  Russian-Japanese  War.  He 
and  Scull  had  laid  m  a  trench  for  twenty-four  hours, 
with  both  the  Russians  and  Japanese  shooting  over 
their  heads.  He  told  me  that  at  one  time  Scull  had 
fitted  out  some  sort  of  an  expedition  at  New  York 
to  go  to  some  remote  part  of  the  world  hunting  bur- 
ied treasures.  Further,  that  Scull  was  a  millionaire 
in  his  own  right,  and  was  a  member  of  the  Harvard 
Club  in  New  York! 

"(I  remember  distinctly  this  talk,  as  it  cost  me 
something  like  $5  in  drinks  at  the  bar  in  the  Menger 
Hotel.) 

"A  day  or  two  later  I  called  Mr.  Scull  in  my  pri- 
vate office  and  informed  him  that  the  next  time  he  left 
the  St.  Anthony  without  settling  his  bill,  he  should 
call  the  Harvard  Club  and  have  them  stand  good  for 
it,  and  not  bother  me  in  the  future  with  such  minor 
things  as  that.  His  reply  was  a  mighty  sheepish 
grin. 

"He  left  the  service  a  short  time  after  this  incident, 
and  the  next  time  I  heard  from  him  he  was  in  New 
York,  doing  great  work  with  the  Police  Depart- 
ment. 

"During  the  time  we  were  at  San  Antonio,  and 
since  then,  we  have  been  fast  friends,  and  I  am  sorry, 
indeed,  to  learn  of  his  death." 

One  of  the  newspaper  correspondents  mentioned 
by  Marshall  Eberstein  writes  of  a  passing  incident 
in  the  border  life  of  the  Skipper.  The  town  was 
Laredo,  Texas.     The  month    was   May,   Madcro's 


208  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

revolution  in  full  bloom  across  the  line  in  Chihuahua, 
and  Laredo,  the  center  of  gun  and  ammunition 
traffic  from  Brownsville  west  to  Eagle  Pass.  He 
describes  it  thus : 

"  'Come  in  here  and  get  a  drink,'  Scull  invited  me 
one  night  after  we'd  palled  around  together  for  a 
week.  'Not  that  I  need  the  drink  very  badly,  but  the 
head  of  the  gun  runners  is  due  to  be  in  town  tonight 
and  this  is  his  hangout.'  He  turned  into  a  very  dis- 
reputable joint  wherein  a  dozen  or  so  Mexicans  were 
seated  about  tables  opposite  the  bar.  We  stood  alone 
at  the  bar  over  our  drinks. 

"  'Look  in  the  mirror,'  Scull  said  in  a  low  voice, 
nodding  slightly  at  the  heavy  bar  mirror  opposite. 
'My  man  is  the  heavy  fellow  with  the  walrus  mous- 
tache sitting  facing  us.' 

"I  was  just  doing  so  when  I  caught  the  flicker  of 
something,  heard  a  crash  of  glass  and  felt  Scull 
bound  away  from  me !  A  ten-inch  dirk  was  quivering 
in  the  wooden  backing  of  the  mirror — Guy  after- 
wards said  he'd  felt  the  wind  of  it  between  our  two 
heads.  Almost  before  I  could  turn  to  find  Scull,  he 
had  the  nippers  on  his  man  and  was  taking  him  out 
from  the  bunch  of  Mexicans,  through  the  streets  to 
the  jail.    When  I  saw  him  later,  he  said: 

"  'Guess  I'll  have  to  begin  packing  a  gun  after 
this.     This  knife  throwing  isn't  clubby.'  " 


Chapter  XV 
NICARAGUA— 1912 

The  State  Department  at  Washington,  D.  C, 
was  responsible  for  Scull  going  to  Nicaragua  in  1912. 
This  Latin  American  Republic  must  have  been  either 
passing  through  or  just  emerging  from  a  periodic 
epidemic  of  political  eruptions  because  its  police  effi- 
ciency was  at  a  very  low  ebb  and  it  had  sent  in  a 
hurry  call  to  Washington  for  advice  and  assistance. 
Who  Scull's  friend  was  in  the  State  Department  that 
suggested  his  name  does  not  appear,  but  he  was  the 
man  recommended  to  go  down  there  and  straighten 
things  out.  The  position  of  Inspector  General  and 
Instructor  of  Police  was  accordingly  formally  offered 
and  accepted  and  Scull  departed  South  all  in  less 
time  almost  than  it  takes  to  tell.  He  left  New  York 
on  January  25th  and  on  February  3rd  wrote  from 
the  City  of  JNIanagua  that  he  had  arrived,  had  two 
talks  with  the  President,  had  taken  over  the  job  and 
was  established  in  his  office.  These  facts  are  stated 
in  so  many  lines  in  a  letter  home,  the  terse  message 
concluding  with  the  sentence:  "The  task  seems  hope- 
less but  interesting." 

Picture  Scull  in  this  Latin  American  capital  with 

209 


210  GUY   HAMILTOlSr    SCULL 

not  a  friend  within  a  thousand  miles  and  surrounded 
by  an  entirely  new  brand  of  politicians,  conspirators, 
revolutionists,  guerillas  and  what  not;  with  no  one 
with  whom  to  advise,  not  even  a  friendly  adjutant 
general  or  secretary,  and  with  nothing  but  the  verbal 
word  of  the  republic's  Chief  Executive  that  he  would 
be  supported  in  everything  he  undertook. 

I  have  never  been  in  Nicaragua  but  from  photo- 
graphs and  descriptions  of  native  types  I  do  not 
think  that  they  offer  very  satisfactory  material  for  the 
making  of  policemen.  Nevertheless  it  was  Scull's 
job  to  shake  up  the  existing  constabulary,  draw  up 
plans  for  a  new  organization,  establish  rules  and 
regulations,  uniform  and  equip  the  force  and  then 
police  the  country  as  it  should  be  policed.  Few  won- 
der that  the  Skipper  added  that  last  line  to  his  letter: 
"A  hopeless  task  but  interesting."  It  proved  to  be 
all  of  that. 

Scull  lost  no  time  in  getting  started  on  his  new  job. 
He  wrote  himself,  in  long  hand,  the  whole  manu- 
script of  the  new  police  book,  including  specifica- 
tions for  uniform  and  equipment.  This  manuscript 
he  for  some  reason  preserved.  It  is  a  thick  sheaf  of 
closely  written  papers  evidence  in  itself  of  long  hours 
of  hard  labor,  thought  and  study.  On  March  3rd, 
about  a  month  after  his  arrival,  he  wrote  his  mother 
that  he  had  begun  to  see  light  ahead  and  that  once 
he  could  get  his  "Three  Platoon  System"  started  he 
would  have  made  real  progress.  This  "Three  Pla- 
toon System"  he  had  modeled  after  the  one  in  effect 


NICARAGUA  211 

in  the  New  York  Police  Department,  borrowing 
some  ideas  from  it  and  adding  many  of  his  own.  He 
had  immense  faith  in  it.  He  confessed  to  his  mother 
that  while  he  saw  confusion  for  a  while  in  startmg 
the  plan  yet  he  was  convinced  that  he  could  pull  it 
through  safely  even  if  he  had  to  do  it  alone. 

At  the  time  of  this  writing  he  was  taking  a  detail 
of  his  new  force  do\^Ti  to  the  seaport  city  of  Corinto 
on  March  5th  to  meet  the  U.  S.  Secretary  of  State, 
the  Hon.  Philander  C.  Knox,  and  party  on  its  way 
to  pay  an  official  visit  to  the  Nicaraguan  capital. 
Scull  writes  that  he  and  his  policemen  were  to  act  as 
an  escort  of  honor  to  the  Secretary  while  he  traveled 
and  sojourned  in  that  country.  Scull  later  told  a 
friend  he  had  never  in  his  life,  either  before  or  after, 
so  much  admired  anything  bearing  the  brand  of  the 
U.  S.  A.,  Secretary  Knox  mcluded,  as  he  did  that 
Marine  Guard  which  came  ashore  with  the  Secretary 
and  officially  turned  him  over  to  the  Inspector  Gen- 
eral and  his  raw  Nicaraguan  police.  Scull  said  that 
the  superb  bearing  of  these  men,  their  cleanliness, 
simplicity  and  smartness,  all  in  such  contrast  to  the 
force  he  had  mustered,  made  him  feel  utterly  incom- 
petent and  small.  However,  he  added  that  he  had 
thanked  his  Maker  for  having  such  a  model  to  hold 
up  to  his  men  and  tried  to  forget  his  troubles  in  the 
effort  to  make  them  make  the  most  of  their  opi^or- 
tunity. 

The  Inspector  General  and  his  police  detail  stuck 
to  the  official  party  day  and  night  while  the  Amcri- 


212  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

cans  were  in  that  country.  The  Latin- American  Re- 
public knew  the  explosive  nature  of  its  citizens  and 
was  not  taking  any  chances  with  their  starting  any 
demonstration.  It  is  not  difficult  to  picture  the  fig- 
ure of  Scull  on  duty.  We  see  this  tall,  spare  figure 
in  white  uniform,  sleeves  rolled  up,  wide  sombrero, 
gun  on  his  hip,  straddling  a  cartridge  box  or  ma- 
chine gun  on  an  armored  flat  car  pushed  by  a  pilot 
engine  ahead  of  the  special  train  carrying  the  dis- 
tinguished visitors  across  the  country,  or  prowling 
about  at  all  hours  night  and  day,  inspecting  his  po- 
licemen posted  as  sentries,  ragging  this  one  for  some 
dereliction  of  duty,  praising  that  one,  giving  a  word 
of  advice  here,  of  caution  there,  taking  the  whole  job 
on  his  own  shoulders  and  trusting  no  one.  It  must 
have  been  a  great  relief  to  him  when,  after  a  round 
of  formal  State  conferences  and  receptions,  the 
Americans  went  aboard  their  ship  and  sailed  for 
home.  For  go  they  finally  did,  and  left  the  Skipper 
alone  to  wrestle  with  his  own  problems. 

By  this  time  his  police  organization  had  been  com- 
pleted; the  force  equipped  and  at  work.  And  no 
sooner  was  it  in  the  field  than  the  Nicaraguans  real- 
ized that  someone  with  authority  was  enforcing  the 
laws.  The  representatives  of  the  law  ceased  to  wink 
at  violations.  No  longer  was  it  possible  to  "sugar" 
the  local  gendarmes.  In  the  words  of  the  local  poli- 
ticians, "ze  friendly  advance  gets  ze  cold  marble 
heart."  These  new  politicians  would  not  trade. 
They  would  not  buy  or  sell  nor  even  compromise. 


NICARAGUA  213 

Scull  cleaned  the  capital  of  rowdies  and  hangers- 
on.  The  district  revolutionary  chiefs  who  in  our 
country  would  occupy  the  position  of  ward  leader  or 
possibly  local  alderman,  came  to  the  Inspector  Gen- 
eral remonstrating.  We  can  see  this  dark-skinned 
excitable  little  man,  rolling  forth  a  flood  of  Spanish, 
talking  with  eyes,  shoulders  and  hands,  to  a  grim  fig- 
ure facing  him  with  folded  arms,  cold,  impassable, 
silent. 

The  new  Inspector  General  chased  the  confidence 
men  away  from  the  capital.  He  cleaned  up  the 
town  of  guerillas  and  petty  hold-up  men  and  then 
went  after  the  gun-runners,  smugglers  and  revolu- 
tionary agents.  He  was  treading  on  profitable  busi- 
ness here.  Planning  revolutions  and  supplying  them 
with  food,  ammunition  and  uniforms  had  been  a  re- 
spectable business  in  these  countries  for  years,  and 
when  policemen  went  about  politely  notifying  citizens 
to  close  up  shop  in  these  activities  there  was  conster- 
nation multiplied  by  indignation.  There  were  meet- 
ings on  street  corners  and  meetings  in  secret.  Dele- 
gations of  dignified  senors  visited  the  office  of  the 
Inspector  General,  protesting  in  the  interests  of  their 
constituents.  There  were  more  excited  conversations 
in  passionate  Spanish,  with  eyebrow  and  shoulder 
obligato,  more  wiggling  of  arms  and  fingers,  through 
all  of  which  one  can  sec  the  placid  Scull  and  his 
beautiful  mask  of  a  face  waiting  patiently  and  then, 
when  they  had  finished,  remarking  laconically, 
"Nothing  doing,"  or,  reaching  across  the  desk  and 


214  GUY   HAMILTOlSr    SCULL 

showing  them  a  marked  paragraph  in  his  new  regu- 
lations, drawl: 

"Take  it  home  and  read  it  to  the  family,"  or  words 
to  that  effect. 

Then  the  delegations  departed,  swearing  in  all 
sorts  of  strange  Spanish  phrases. 

So  far  the  government  had  backed  him  up.  His 
officers  and  men,  timid  at  first  and  doubting  if  this 
tall,  silent  chief  could  do  everything  he  was  attempt- 
ing, gradually  took  courage  as  Scull  progressed. 
His  work  began  to  show  results.  He  had  so  far  re- 
ceived obedience  through  stiff  discipline  but  when  it 
became  apparent  that  the  local  politicians  could  not 
touch  their  chief,  his  policemen  gave  him  loyal  sup- 
port with  everything  they  had.  He  was  building  up 
a  morale  and  a  certain  es'prit  de  corps  when  he  de- 
cided to  go  after  the  gambling  houses. 

He  "got"  most  of  the  little  fellows  with  ease  and 
rapidity  although  he  went  after  them  all,  big  as  well 
as  little,  without  respect  or  favor.  Then,  the  story 
goes,  he  discovered  that  what  had  appeared  to  be  a 
popular  place  of  amusement  and  entertainment  was 
in  reality  a  wide-open  sporting  establishment,  oper- 
ated in  open  defiance  of  both  the  law  and  himself. 
Continuing  the  story,  it  is  related  that  he  first  tried 
persuasion  and  friendly  advice  and  that  he  was 
laughed  at  for  his  pains.  So  he  issued  a  formal  order 
to  the  proprietor  to  close  up  or  suffer  the  conse- 
quences. No  attention  was  paid  to  this.  Whereupon 
the  soft-voiced  Scull  paid  a  visit  in  person  to  the 


NICARAGUA  215 

establishment  and  politely  informed  the  Senor  in 
charge  that  if  the  place  was  not  shut  tight  within 
twenty-four  hours  he  would  be  obliged  to  close  it  for 
him,  adding  that  he  did  not  wish  to  be  obliged  to  use 
force  because  force  usually  made  a  mess  of  beautiful 
things.  At  the  end  of  twenty-four  hours  the  house 
was  going  wide  open  and  full  blast. 

So  without  any  more  "how  do  you  do's,"  or  "by 
your  leave,"  or  "Gratios,  Senor's,"  Scull  pulled  a  po- 
lice raid.  They  say  it  was  a  regular,  old-time,  crash- 
ing, smashing  descent  and  that  New  York  City  never 
witnessed  anything  more  spectacular  in  the  days  of 
Jerome  and  the  palatial  Canfield's.  The  Nicara- 
guan  capital  was  aghast.  A  sporting  establishment 
which  had  flourished  through  so  many  different  ad- 
ministrations and  had  survived  so  many  attempts  to 
shut  it  up  was  suddenly  and  unceremoniously  tossed 
into  the  middle  of  the  Plaza  and  its  doors  locked  and 
sealed! 

The  next  day  Scull  was  asked  to  resign.  He  re- 
ceived a  vote  of  thanks  from  the  government  and 
many  verbal  bouquets,  and  an  engrossed  letter,  but 
he  wasn't  wanted  in  that  country.  The  proprietor 
of  the  sporting  house  was,  it  seems,  "a  friend  of  a 
friend  of  a  friend"  of  "the  man  higher  up"  which 
meant  in  the  New  York  vernacular  that  "somebody 
was  getting  his"  and  that  the  Skipper  had  killed  the 
hen  that  laid  the  golden  egg.  Thus  Scull's  career  as 
a  Central  American  dictator  ended  as  suddenly  as  it 
began,  and  I  think  I  can  easily  imagine  his  thoughts 


216  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

as  he  watched  the  skyline  of  Nicaragua  drop  below 
the  horizon  and  disappear  in  the  trailing  smoke  of  the 
northbound  steamship  carrying  him  home.  Was 
there  so  much  difference  between  the  Latin  Amer- 
ican and  the  New  Yorker  after  all? 


Chapter  XVI 

NEW  YORK  CITY  POLICE  DEPARTMENT 

1914-1917 

The  man  who  knew  Scull  best  of  all  was  Arthur 
Woods,  his  police  chief  in  the  Bingham  administra- 
tion when  Woods  was  a  deputy,  and  again  in  the  Mit- 
chel  administration  when  Woods  was  the  Police  Com- 
missioner. 

"He's  boss,"  said  Scull,  on  my  first  day  at  Head- 
quarters, pointing  through  the  open  door  from  his 
desk  towards  Commissioner  Woods'  desk,  "because 
he's  there!"  tapping  his  forehead  with  one  long  finger. 
"He'll  do  all  the  thinking.     You  do  what  he  says." 

Scull  had  been  promoted  from  Secretary  to  Dep- 
uty Commissioner  and  I  appointed  as  his  successor. 
The  above  were  his  first  instructions,  and  his  last 
were:  "What  you  hear,  remember,  but  don't  repeat. 
From  now  on  you're  a  dummy." 

Since  then  I've  been  with  both  of  them  for  hours 
at  a  time  and  never  heard  "Skip"  say  a  word  save  in 
answer  to  a  question.  The  question  was  usually  a 
hard  one  and  the  answer  short  and  full  of  meat.  If 
Scull  had  nothing  to  offer  he  shook  his  head  and  said 
nothing.  He  never  tried  to  bluff.  He  never  talked 
around  a  subject.    He  went  directly  at  it.    After  he 

217 


218  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

was  made  a  deputy  he  opened  up  more  and  talked 
more.  Scull  had  a  mind  that  was  clean,  clear,  in- 
tensely human  and  the  Boss  never  failed  to  make 
use  of  it.  Distinctly  different  in  manner,  tastes, 
habits  and  inclinations  they  were  together  instantly 
when  a  problem  arose  and  their  minds  usually  reached 
similar  conclusions  although  through  entirely  dif- 
ferent channels. 

"Detective  work  had  a  fascination  for  Guy  Scull," 
writes  Arthur  Woods.  "He  was  interested  in  most 
of  the  many  different  phases  of  police  work,  but 
nothing  absorbed  him  like  trying  to  pick  up  the  trail 
in  an  intricate  murder  case.  He  looked  the  part,  too. 
His  clearly  chiseled  features,  'his  tragic  face,'  as  a 
friend  of  ours  put  it,  his  emphatic  silence  and  reserve, 
all  reminded  one  of  the  detective  in  print. 

"He  rather  puzzled  the  old-line  New  York  detec- 
tives when  he  came  into  the  Police  Department  in 
December,  1908.  His  title  was  Secretary  to  a  Deputy 
Commissioner,  but  his  authority  was  far  greater  than 
this  title  would  indicate,  for  he  was  practically  in 
charge  of  certain  parts  of  the  work.  He  quickly 
got  into  personal  touch  with  the  men.  There  was 
no  ceremony  about  him,  no  formality,  but  intense  in- 
terest, rare  human  understanding,  a  quiet,  unasser- 
tive dignity,  and  a  very  evident  reserve  of  fortitude 
and  capability.  This  was  a  somewhat  novel  kind  of 
boss  for  the  men.  They  were  not  unused  to  the  blus- 
tering boss,  they  had  had  experience  with  smooth 
talkers,  with  boasters,  with  self-seekers,  but  this  quiet 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     219 

man,  listening  rather  than  talking,  drawing  them 
out  rather  than  admonishing  them,  asking  their  sug- 
gestions, stimulating  their  ideas,  helping  them  over 
difficult  places,  was  an  unwonted  phenomenon  in 
Mulberry  Street.  Some  of  the  detectives  who  had 
been  long  in  the  business,  and  were  used  to  the  Tam- 
manj^  days,  probably  never  did  make  him  out.  They 
scratched  their  heads  in  despair,  trying  to  discover 
"what  he  was  after,"  for  it  never  occurred  to  the  po- 
litical policeman  that  he  was  after  nothing  except  the 
chance  to  do  his  work  well. 

"Jacob  Riis  used  to  tell  a  story  about  the  uneasiness 
created  in  Tammany  by  an  honest  and  able  public 
servant.  They  couldn't  make  out  what  his  graft  was, 
and  they  worried  lest  he  had  discovered  some  source 
of  improper  gain  as  yet  unkno\'\Ti  to  them! 

"All  but  a  few  detectives,  however,  soon  grew  to 
know  and  understand  Scull,  and  their  personal  loy- 
alty to  him  was  genuine  and  strong.  He  never  shirked, 
either  physically  or  mentally,  he  was  always  ready  to 
help,  he  never  evaded  responsibility.  I  don't  believe 
he  was  ever  unfair  to  a  detective,  and  his  power  of 
handling  men  and  spurring  them  on  to  their  best  ef- 
forts was  such  that  he  seldom  had  to  resort  to  disci- 
pline. He  worked  with  his  men  and  they  worked  hard 
with  him,  and  for  him.  His  best  work  and  the  work  he 
enjoyed  most  was  done  with  small  squads,  where  his 
personality  could  be  felt  and  where  he  could  grow  to 
know  the  men  intimately.  I  think  he  never  enjoyed 
his  later  work  in  charge  of  the  Bureau  as  much  as  these 


220  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

early  days  when  he  was  so  close  to  the  work  and  to 
the  men. 

"When  he  became  Deputy  Commissioner  in  charge 
of  the  Detective  Bureau  he  had  had  many  months 
of  this  invaluable  experience.  He  had  learned  by 
personal  experience  what  manner  of  life  a  New  York 
detective  leads,  what  risks  he  runs,  what  temptations 
he  must  meet,  what  puzzling  problems  he  must  solve, 
often  without  a  moment  for  deliberation.  As  a  re- 
sult of  this,  the  question  that  stayed  uppermost  in 
his  mind  was,  how  could  he  best  help  the  men  who 
were  doing  the  work?  What  could  he  do,  as  Head 
of  the  Bureau,  to  improve  their  skill,  to  lessen  their 
hardships,  to  fortify  their  zeal? 

"Were  detectives  born  or  made?  He  would  often 
discuss  this,  and  came  to  a  characteristically  practical 
working  conclusion.  Some  men  were  more  likely 
to  make  good  detectives  than  others;  the  thing  to  do 
in  picking  men  for  the  Bureau  was  to  take  the  most 
promising,  and  try  them  out.  Results  would  tell. 
Some  would  be  better  than  others,  but  even  those 
predestined  to  excel  as  sleuths  could  be  helped,  so 
why  bother  as  to  this  'born  or  made  business' — just 
take  them  all  as  they  were  and  do  what  you  could 
to  improve  and  support  their  work.  Hunt  for  native 
ability,  and  then  help  it  along. 

"Scull's  training  school  for  detectives  was  about 
as  practical  an  affair  as  could  be  imagined.  It  grew 
out  of  the  requirements  of  the  work.  It  tried  to 
supply  what  experience  had  repeatedly  shown  was 


DEl'LTV    I'OI.K'I':    COMMISSION  I:H,    1!)IT 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     221 

needed,  and  to  supply  it  in  such  a  way  that  it  could 
be  readily  grasped  by  the  men.  For  example,  a  pre- 
vailing difficulty  in  all  police  and  detective  work 
is  to  get  good  descriptions  of  people.  The  power 
of  observation  in  most  of  us  doesn't  seem  to  be  highly 
developed,  and  what  there  is  of  it  seems  to  be  seldom 
used.  We  are  not  in  the  habit  of  close  and  accurate 
observation.  Wlien  it  comes  to  giving  a  description 
of  a  person  we  find  that  we  have  not  observed  the 
person  closely  enough  to  be  able  to  arrive  at  a  de- 
scription which  will  be  specific  enough  to  enable  some- 
one else  to  identifj'^  that  person. 

"Scull,  in  talking  to  a  class  in  the  Detective's 
School  about  this,  spoke  of  the  difficulty,  and  went 
on:  'You  will  often  get  such  a  description  as  this — 
"Man,  27  years,  150  pounds,  5  feet  7  inches,  dark 
complexion,  wearing  blue  suit,  black  derby  hat."  As 
you  men  will  readily  see,  this  description  will  prob- 
ably fit  several  thousand  men  in  this  city.  However, 
it  is  the  best  description  that  the  person  giving  it  can 
make  at  the  time  because  he  has  not  trained  himself 
to  observe  the  appearance  of  people,  and  is  just  mak- 
ing up  the  description  from  a  hazy  impression  he 
received.  If  you  practise  making  mental  notes  of 
the  appearance  of  people  in  the  streets,  I  think  you 
will  very  soon  find  that  you  will  get  into  the  habit  of 
taking  in  at  a  glance  the  essential  and  distinguishing 
features  of  a  person's  appearance,  so  that  it  will  be- 
come perfectly  natural  for  you  to  be  able  to  give  a 
definite  description  of  a  person.    You  will  know,  for 


222  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL' 

instance,  the  general  make-up  of  his  face,  what  sort  of 
expression  he  has,  is  he  pale  or  does  he  look  as  though 
he  had  been  in  the  open  air  a  lot,  is  he  of  the  working- 
man  type,  the  clerk  type,  professional  man  type, 
whether  his  clothing  looks  new  and  prosperous,  or 
shabby,  whether  he  has  any  scars  on  his  face,  any 
peculiarities  about  his  eyes,  or  about  any  other  fea- 
ture, any  distinctive  way  of  carrying  himself,  or  mov- 
ing hands  or  feet  or  arms,  in  short,  anything  unusual 
that  would  tend  to  distinguish  him  from  other  people/ 

"The  instruction  in  this  Training  School  was  all 
of  a  practical  nature,  given  with  the  object  of  filling 
the  needs  of  the  actual  men  who  were  at  that  time 
engaged  in  the  actual  work  of  detecting  crime  in 
New  York  City.  If  there  was  anything  that  Scull 
abhorred  it  was  unpractical,  theoretical  ways  of  go- 
ing at  things,  that  did  not  take  into  account  things 
as  they  were. 

"One  of  the  classes  of  crime  to  which  Scull  gave 
most  time  and  thought  was  murders.  Here,  as  in  his 
efforts  to  help  men  through  the  Training  School,  he 
worked  in  a  practical  way.  He  tried  to  pick  for  homi- 
cide work  those  detectives  who  showed  the  best  re- 
sults at  it,  and  his  arrangements  were  such  that  a 
squad  of  detectives  working  on  murders  was  relieved 
from  other  work,  so  that  they  could  put  their  whole 
thought  and  time  on  running  down  murderers.  A 
great  deal  depends  in  such  cases  as  these  on  what 
happens  in  the  first  half  hour  after  the  murder  is 
committed.    The  trail  is  then  piping  hot,  and  many 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     223 

clues  are  perceptible  which  cool  off  as  the  minutes 
wear  on.  A  detective  has  to  work  fast  and  largely 
by  instinct  during  these  first  few  precious  minutes 
and  hours.  It  was  found,  however,  that  sometimes 
a  detective  whose  instincts  and  methods  were  sound 
and  prompt,  failed  because  he  did  not  have  imme- 
diately at  hand  the  proper  equipment.  To  correct 
this  the  scheme  was  worked  out  of  having  a  murder 
kit  available  at  all  times;  it  contained  the  following 
articles : 

Complete  fingerprint  outfit 

Searchlight 

Steel  tape  measure 

Paper 

Envelopes 

Sealing  wax 

Twine 

Tags 

Small  box  of  tools 

Soap  and  towel 

Stenographer's  note-book 

Rubber  gloves 

Bottle  of  antiseptic  wash 

Saw 

Screwdriver 

File 

Pincers 

Scissors 

Jimmy 


224  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 


ti 


*As  I  remember  it,  the  contents  of  this  kit  were 
determined  on  at  conferences  in  which  Scull  and 
Frank  Lord,  another  Deputy  Commissioner,  were 
the  principal  actors.  There  was  no  need  of  discus- 
sion as  to  what  articles  should  be  put  in;  detectives 
told  what  they  had  needed  in  times  past  and  had  been 
unable  to  get,  and  these  things  made  up  the  murder 
kit.  It  was  also  arranged  so  that  at  all  hours  of 
the  day  and  night  a  stenographer  and  a  photographer 
were  on  hand  to  go  at  once  with  the  murder  squad, 
ready  to  do  their  part. 

"One  day  Scull  felt,  I  remember,  that  he  had  been 
prevented  from  following  out  a  promising  lead  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  he  didn't  have  a  doctor  at  hand. 
From  then  on  he  arranged  so  that  one  of  two  doctors, 
who  were  keen  on  the  work  and  very  competent, 
should  be  available  by  telephone  at  any  time,  and 
their  work  after  that  often  showed  excellent  results. 

"In  Scull's  notes  of  talks  to  detectives,  he  lays 
careful  and  characteristic  emphasis  upon  the  work- 
ing together  between  the  coroner's  physician,  who 
of  course  had  the  right  to  examine  the  body,  and  the 
detective.  'The  detective  should  always  keep  in 
mind,'  he  pointed  out,  'that  the  doctor  is  going  to 
examine  the  body  from  the  doctor's  point  of  view 
and  not  from  the  detective's  point  of  view.  His 
report  will  undoubtedly  contain  some  very  valuable 
information  concerning  the  state  of  the  body  from 
a  medical  point  of  view,  but  will  leave  untold  much 
more  valuable  information  regarding  the  crime  from 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     225 

the  detective's  point  of  view.  The  detective  should 
ask  the  doctor  questions  and  draw  from  him  the  in- 
formation which  is  important  to  him.  No  doubt  the 
doctor  would  be  perfectly  willing  to  give  this  informa- 
tion in  the  first  place ;  the  trouble  is  he  doesn't  know 
what  the  detective  wants.  For  instance,  the  doctor 
will  report  that  the  man  was  killed  by  being  struck 
on  the  head  by  some  blunt  instrument,  and  will  then 
probably  reel  off  a  string  of  long  Latin  names,  tell- 
ing exactly  what  the  blow  did  to  the  victim.  Now 
what  the  detective  wants  to  know  is  what  kind  of 
blunt  instrument  it  was.  Was  it  made  of  some  hard 
material,  such  as  steel,  or  of  soft  material,  such  as 
wood?  Was  the  blow  struck  by  a  right-handed  or 
a  left-handed  person?  Was  it  struck  from  behind 
or  in  front?  Was  there  anything  about  the  wound 
to  indicate  that  the  blow  was  struck  by  a  weak  person, 
such  as  a  woman,  or  was  unusual  force  required.' 

"In  his  work  on  murders  and  in  trying  to  help 
detectives  to  solve  them,  the  same  characteristics 
showed  as  were  evident  in  Scull's  other  work — a  rare 
combination  of  plain  common  sense  and  of  expert 
method,  and  a  happy  faculty  of  being  able  to  apply 
each  in  the  proper  place  and  at  the  proper  time,  and 
of  helping  others  also  to  learn  how  to  do  this. 

"Probably  Scull's  greatest  work  was  in  connection 
with  the  war.  The  trouble  began  in  Europe  in 
August,  1914.  During  the  early  days  of  the  month 
a  squad  was  instituted  under  the  command  of  In- 
spector Thomas  J.  Tunney,  and  it  was  soon  put  under 


226  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  supervision  of  Deputy  Commissioner  Scull.  The 
object  of  this  squad  was  to  do  such  detective  work 
as  might  be  necessary  to  maintain  the  neutrality  of 
the  United  States.  Although  city  police  forces  did 
not  usually  take  it  upon  themselves  to  do  such  dis- 
tmctively  federal  work,  we  felt  this  was  necessary 
because  of  the  commanding  position  of  New  York 
City  as  the  greatest  city  and  the  greatest  harbor  in 
the  country,  containing  so  many  thousands  of  people 
of  different  nationalities,  and  because  the  Federal 
intelligence  forces  were  weak.  They  had  been  organ- 
ized and  developed  with  no  thought  of  such  a  thing 
as  a  world  war.  It  had  been  only  a  few  years  ago 
that  Congress  clipped  the  wings  of  the  Secret  Service 
force  of  the  Treasury  Department  and  confined  its 
activities,  if  I  remember  rightly,  to  counterfeiting, 
smuggling,  and  guarding  the  person  of  the  President. 
It  was  reported,  doubtless  only  by  irresponsible  per- 
sons, that  Congress  did  this  because  it  had  a  feeling 
that  the  President  possibly  had  used  or  might  be 
tempted  to  use  members  of  the  Secret  Service  force 
to  investigate  members  of  Congress ! 

"In  an  astonishingly  short  length  of  time  it  was 
found  out  that  the  Germans  were  actively  at  work 
trying  to  prevent  the  shipment  of  supplies  and 
munitions  from  America  to  the  Allies.  There  were 
two  principal  methods,  destruction  and  industrial 
impotency. 

"Scull's  squad  found  plots  to  destroy  factories,  to 
blow  up  trains,  to  sink  ships.    The  stories  of  some  of 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     227 

the  spectacular  cases  that  resulted  from  this  work 
have  been  told,  but  they  don't  begin  to  show  the  in- 
cessant, resourceful,  keen-witted  attention  that  was 
given  to  this  phase  of  his  work  by  Scull. 

''It  was  found  also  that  attempts  were  being  made 
to  paralyze  factories  where  munitions  or  supplies  for 
foreign  governments  were  being  made,  by  means  of 
strikes  or  sabotage,  and  by  spreading  among  the  work- 
ingmen  the  fear  that  incendiarism  and  explosions  were 
imminent  at  their  plants.  This  sort  of  thing  when 
discovered  by  the  neutrality  squad  would  be  taken  up 
in  whatever  way  seemed  likely  to  bring  most  success. 
Scull  worked  more  and  more  with  the  rest  of  the 
Department,  with  other  Departments,  and  with  the 
growing  intelligence  organizations  of  the  National 

government. 

"When  America  went  to  war  the  character  of  the 
work  of  this  squad  changed  into  counter-spy  work, 
which  was  not  so  different  after  all,  since  it  was  car- 
ried on  by  the  same  organization  which  had  previously 
been  doing  the  war  work  in  violation  of  our  neutrality. 

"Perhaps  the  most  marked  characteristic  of  Scull's 
was  his  straightforwardness.  There  was  never  a  sus- 
picion that  he  was  anything  but  what  he  seemed,  or 
had  any  object  but  what  he  professed.  He  was  always 
charitable  to  faults  if  he  believed  that  intentions  were 
good.  Blundering  detective  work,  if  done  in  earnest, 
he  would  always  be  considerate  of,  and  let  the  blun- 
derer down  easy.  He  had  an  abhorrence  of  the  'bawl- 
ing out'  methods  which  were  so  prevalent  in  the  old 


228  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

police  days.  If  a  man  were  honest,  tried  hard,  and 
had  common  sense,  Scull  would  work  with  him  and 
fight  for  him;  he  could  put  up  with  anything  else  if 
a  man  had  these  traits.  He  was  so  whole-hearted  in 
his  o^m  work,  so  earnest,  that  it  was  catchmg.  He 
was  a  case  of  the  deep  flowing  of  still  waters. 

"My  personal  relations  with  Guy  Scull  were  very 
close,  far  closer  even  than  would  have  been  called  for 
by  the  fact  that  we  worked  together  so  long  on  such 
a  job.  In  the  days  when  we  were  both  bachelors,  we 
spent  evening  after  evening  together,  usually  inves- 
tigating conditions  and  looking  at  places  which  were 
demanding  police  attention  at  the  time.  Scull  was  a 
great  companion.  He  was  always  interested,  and 
he  always  had  some  quiet  humorous  slant  on  a 
situation. 

"I  remember  one  day  talking  with  him  about  an 
invitation  I  had  received  from  Thomas  Mott  Osborne, 
Warden  of  Sing  Sing  Prison,  to  go  up  there  and  talk 
to  the  convicts.  It  was  a  rather  puzzling  situation 
to  face,  since  I  had  probably  been  instrumental  in 
sending  a  large  portion  of  them  there,  and  I  said  to 
Scull  I  didn't  see  how  I  could  go  since  I  didn't  know 
what  in  the  world  to  say  to  them.  'Huh,'  answered 
Scull,  'that's  easy  enough;  go  and  tell  them  you're 
glad  to  see  them  all  there.' 

"He  was  an  inflexible  person  when  he  had  made  up 
his  mind  about  anything,  and  would  take  and  main- 
tain the  position  he  believed  hi  against  any  opposi- 
tion.    His  flow  of  language,  when  he  got  really 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     229 

worked  up  on  one  of  his  favorite  subjects,  was  as 
great  as  was  his  habitual  silence.  Not  infrequently 
would  one  wander  into  the  Harvard  Club  and  find 
Scull  the  central  point  of  a  group  of  men  in  lively 
discussion — the  subject  usually  was  political.  There 
was  no  compromise  in  his  views.  One  evening  he 
maintained  against  all  comers  his  contention  that 
death  should  be  the  penalty  for  any  one  proved  guilty 
of  defrauding  the  city.  His  idea  that  public  office 
was  a  trust  went  as  far  as  this,  and  he  was  relentless 
in  hunting  down  grafters  both  while  he  was  in  the 
Police  Department  and  in  the  splendid  work  he  did 
later  in  the  Military  Intelligence  Service. 

"He  always  saw  the  funny  side  of  things.  One 
afternoon  in  the  old  office  in  Mulberry  Street  we  re- 
ceived a  call  from  a  well  kno^vn  underworld  character 
named  Kelly,  who  wanted  to  start  up  a  saloon  in  the 
lower  Bowery  neighborhood.  This  neighborhood 
had,  during  the  memory  of  the  oldest  inhabitant, 
been  largely  populated  by  glittering  saloons  which 
never  had  been  closed  night,  day  or  Sunday,  in  spite 
of  the  law.  Some  of  them  boasted  that  they  had  lost 
the  key  to  their  front  door.  They  had  powerful  po- 
litical protection  and  it  had  always  worked.  Every 
little  while,  of  course,  just  to  keep  up  appearances, 
they  were  'raided,'  proper  notice  being  given,  and 
were  sedately  fined  in  court  something  like  twenty- 
five  dollars.  This  was  part  of  the  business;  no  one 
misunderstood  it. 

"We  worked  out  a  scheme,  however,  whereby  these 


230  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

vicious  places  were  actually  put  out  of  business,  and 
the  scheme  was  in  the  flood  tide  of  operation  at  the 
time  Mr.  Kelly  visited  us.  He  was  a  good  business 
man  and  wanted  to  know  what  chance  he  had  of  keep- 
ing out  of  the  net  in  case  he  started  up  what  he  termed 
to  be  'a  high-class,  respectable  joint.' 

"We  heard  his  whole  story  and  asked  him  if  he  in- 
tended to  run  his  saloon  strictly  in  accordance  with 
law.  He  said:  'Sure,  of  course,  just  the  same  as  every 
one  else  does.'  We  told  him  we  thought  he  had  come 
to  the  wrong  place — this  was  Police  Headquarters, 
shouldn't  he  have  gone  to  the  Headquarters  of  his 
Tammany  district  leader?  Didn't  he  believe  that  his 
leader  could  get  privileges  for  him? 

"  'Huh?'  he  replied,  quick  as  a  flash,  'he,  privileges, 
here?  Huh,  he  couldn't  get  the  right  time  of  day 
here.'  Scull  went  into  a  convulsion  of  laughter  and, 
Kelly  left  us  with  no  hard  feeling,  but  his  saloon  was 
not  opened. 

"He  always  had  characteristic  ways  of  doing  things, 
and  one  of  the  most  typical  of  them  was  when  he  came 
into  my  office  one  afternoon  and  said:  'Boss,  do  you 
suppose  I  could  take  a  day  off  tomorrow.  I'll  be  here 
in  the  morning  and  take  care  of  my  mail,  but  I'd 
like  to  get  away  around  eleven  o'clock — I'm  going 
to  get  married.' 

"The  next  day,  July  8,  1914,  he  was  married,*  and 

*To  Nancy  Whitman,  daughter  of  Mrs.  Nannie  Bostick  Butler,  in 
the  Church  of  the  Heavenly  Rest,  New  York  City,  by  the  Rev.  Herbert 
Shipman,  who  was  chaplain  of  Holland  Lodge,  F.  and  A.  M.,  of  which 
Scidl  was  a  life  member. 


f. 


< 


O 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     231 

this  began  for  him  a  life  which  brought  out  the  best 
that  was  in  him,  gave  him  genuine  happiness,  and 
seemed  to  add  to  his  fullness  and  power  each  suc- 
ceeding year.  His  friends  all  felt  that  his  wild  wan- 
derings, his  uncertainties,  his  indulgences  were  over. 
He  settled  into  a  happy  home  life.  He  was  com- 
pletely devoted  to  his  wife  and  children  and  he 
brought  to  the  new  tasks  he  undertook  a  largeness  of 
view  and  a  ripeness  of  experience  which  promised 
more  and  greater  achievement." 

Late  in  1914  or  early  in  1915  there  was  a  sudden 
increase  in  homicides  in  the  city.  At  Headquarters 
in  the  new  statistical  room  this  column  of  figures  had 
become  the  official  barometer.  Unlike  a  ship  barom- 
eter, it  rose  with  an  approaching  storm  instead  of 
falling.  Homicides  usually  mean  murders,  and  an 
increase  in  murders  means  lawlessness.  Scull,  having 
just  been  promoted  to  Fifth  Deputy  Commissioner 
and  paired  with  Deputy  Commissioner  Lord  in  the 
direction  of  the  Detective  Bureau,  was  put  to  the  test 
at  once.  His  job  was  to  reduce  crime.  It  was  either  to 
stop  the  frequency  of  "stick-ups,"  murders  and  as- 
sassinations or  resign  his  job.  Scull  didn't  look  for 
excuses  or  plead  ignorance  or  haul  policemen  up  on 
charges  of  neglect  of  duty.  He  took  the  whole  bur- 
den on  his  own  shoulders,  held  his  men  blameless,  and 
worked  twelve,  fourteen  and  eighteen  hours  a  day, 
trying  to  find  a  reason  for  the  outbreak. 

The  driver  of  Scull's  police  car  used  to  wonder 
when  his  chief  ever  got  any  sleep.    No  matter  where 


232  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

Steull  had  been,  or  where  he  left  him,  or  what  time,  or 
how  late  into  the  gray  dawn  of  morning  it  was,  his 
orders  were  to  meet  the  "Commish"  at  the  entrance  of 
his  apartment  house  on  East  79th  Street,  at  eight 
A.  M.  daily,  and  every  day  at  that  hour  there  was 
Scull,  fresh  shaven,  bathed  and  ready  for  another 
day's  work,  waiting  for  the  motor  car  to  pick  him  up 
and  take  him  on  his  way. 

Frank  Lord,  the  Second  Deputy,  had  a  way  of 
"teasing  Scull  by  going  into  the  front  office  about 
6:30  P.M.  when  the  other  deputies  usually  dropped 
in  for  a  last  word  preparatory  to  leaving  for  dinner, 
and  say: 

"Mr.  Commissioner,  Five  (Scull's  official  number) 
says  he's  gomg  home  early  and  wants  to  know  if  he 
can  have  a  half  a  day  off!" 

But  the  crimes  continued,  and  the  newspapers  be- 
gan to  print  the  sensational  "Black  Hand"  stories. 
This  was  on  account  of  the  fact  that  no  motives  were 
shown  for  these  killings  save  the  sign  of  the  "Black 
Hand."  Sometimes  these  crimes  were  committed 
with  the  knife,  sometimes  the  gun,  and  sometimes  a 
bomb.  The  miscreants  did  not  stop  with  the  death  of 
the  victim,  but  usually  tried  to  destroy  his  home  or 
place  of  business,  or  kill  or  kidnap  a  member  of  his 
family.  Over  three-quarter  of  the  victims  were  Ital- 
ian. The  police  did  not  think  much  of  the  "Black 
Hand"  theory,  nor  the  results  of  feuds  or  vendettas. 
They  had  a  fairly  good  suspicion  that  the  Italian 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     233 

lottery  policy  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  miser- 
able business. 

In  this  countrj'^  the  Italian  lottery  policy  is  known 
as  a  gambling  game  pure  and  simple.  In  Italy  it  is, 
or  was  then,  legal,  the  government  le^'ying  a  tax  on 
the  profits.  The  lottery  here  is  unlawful,  being 
against  both  the  Federal  and  the  State  statutes.  Nu- 
merous arrests  had  been  made  among  the  Italians 
for  this  offense,  but  in  each  case  where  convictions 
were  secured,  fines  or  short  sentences  only  had  been 
imposed,  neither  of  which  had  any  effect  upon  the 
big  gamblers,  who  were  the  King  Pins  in  the  game 
and  who  were  making  the  big  money.  They  also  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  under  cover.  All  these  facts  were 
developed  by  Scull's  investigations.  He  developed 
the  further  and  important  fact  that  there  was  bitter 
rivalry  for  the  directors'  jobs,  the  control  of  the  lot- 
tery, and  the  division  of  the  spoils. 

Scull  started  on  the  theory  that  if  he  could  ascer- 
tain who  these  gamblers  were,  it  would  be  easy  to 
find  out  the  leading  members  of  the  various  groups, 
what  their  particular  grievances  were  against  each 
other,  and  if  they  were  using  violence  to  accomplish 
their  ends. 

The  usual  method  of  the  police  in  obtaining  infor- 
mation had  been  "stool  pigeons,"  that  is  to  say,  using 
a  crook  to  catch  a  crook,  or  using  one  gambler  to  catch 
another.  This  meant  the  use  of  bribe  money  or  the 
giving  of  privileges  in  the  breaking  of  the  law.  Gam- 
blers, however,  are  not  given  to  "squealing."    More- 


234  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

over,  it  appeared  that  "stool  pigeons"  had  a  discour- 
aging way  of  pretending  to  give  up  information  and 
at  the  same  time  tipping  off  their  friends  of  any  con- 
templated police  action.  In  other  words,  the  "stool 
pigeon"  was  a  "double-cross"  artist.  Scull  rejected 
the  use  of  them  in  this  hunt.  He  called  in  one  Tun- 
ney,  then  a  captain  of  the  Bomb  Squad  and  after- 
wards an  inspector,  and  procuring  the  services  of  a 
number  of  bright  young  probationers  from  the  Train- 
ing School  and  a  few  more  from  the  eligible  list,  both 
groups  of  whom  were  not  known  as  policemen,  put 
these  men  under  Tunney.  All  were  Italians  or  of 
Italian  descent.  They  were  kept  at  work  at  their 
trade  as  citizens,  and  while  so  engaged  were  encour- 
aged to  work  themselves  into  the  good  graces  of 
Italians  who  were  playing  the  lottery. 

These  men  succeeded  in  getting  into  the  game,  and 
it  wasn't  very  long  before  they  were  acquainted  with 
the  heads  of  the  system.  Soon  they  actually  got  to 
know  personally  the  members  of  the  so-called  Cor- 
poration or  "Big  Four."  These  four  men  controlled 
the  whole  lottery  policy  game,  not  alone  in  Greater 
New  York,  but  in  the  New  England  States  and  up 
and  do^vn  the  coast,  north  and  south.  There  was  in 
each  State  the  drawing  for  numbers,  the  paying  of 
the  money,  the  receiving  of  the  lucky  number  from 
Italy,  the  announcement  of  the  same,  and  the  paying 
of  the  prizes  to  the  winners.  In  all  of  this  there  was, 
of  course,  much  chance  for  crookedness  and  chance 
to  defraud  the  ignorant  players  of  their  hard-earned 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     235 

money.  This  desire  for  being  "in  the  know,"  for  the 
chance  to  defraud,  turned  out  to  be  the  cause  of  most 
of  the  crimes.  It  was  the  old,  old  story  of  jealousy 
and  greed,  hatred,  temptation  and  murder. 

To  prove  it  Scull  had  to  intercept  the  messages 
from  Italy,  watch  their  delivery,  and  spot  the  persons 
who  received  them.  He  presently  developed  the  fact 
that  the  numbers  were  cabled  weekly  to  one  of  the 
Big  Four  in  New  York.  These  messages  were  in 
code,  and  they  were  delivered  to  a  different  address 
each  week.  The  first  week  the  message  in  code  would 
be  delivered  to  an  address  do^vntown,  the  second  week 
to  one  uptown,  the  third  week  to  an  address  in  Brook- 
lyn, and  the  fourth  to  an  address  up  in  the  Bronx. 
The  fifth  week  they  would  start  all  over  again.  In 
each  event  a  woman  received  the  message. 

When  all  these  further  facts  had  been  developed, 
the  sj^stem  w^atched  and  checked,  and  the  method  de- 
termined whereby  the  necessary  evidence  could  be 
taken  to  secure  a  case  in  court,  the  detectives  were 
sent  to  their  stations  one  day,  the  trap  sprung,  and 
the  entire  gang  taken  into  custody.  The  cable  com- 
pany was  notified  to  stop  sending  and  receiving  the 
messages,  and  the  gambling  effectively  smashed.  The 
courts  imposed  good  stiff  sentences  in  all  convictions 
secured,  the  head  gamblers  were  scattered  or  sent 
to  prison,  and  the  "Black  Hand"  terror  ended. 

Inspector  John  J.  Cray,  one  of  Scull's  chief  detec- 
tive officers,  was  an  officer  wlio  had  pushed  his  way 
to  the  top  through  pure  force  of  personality,  native 


236  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

intelligence  and  physical  leadership.  It  was  natural 
that  some  coldness  and  reserve  lay  between  these  two 
at  first — this  Harvard  man  and  this  policeman  born 
and  reared  on  the  old  East  Side  of  New  York;  this 
Boston  man  who  had  worked  for  the  Fusionists  and 
this  loyal  son  of  Tammany  Hall  and  kinsman  of  the 
biggest  boss  of  any  political  organization  since 
Croker!  It  wouldn't  have  been  possible  to  think  of 
two  more  different  men  than  Scull  and  Cray,  and  yet 
from  the  day  they  met  on  a  particularly  baffling  homi- 
cide case  to  the  day  of  Scull's  death  they  worked  to- 
gether like  the  oldest  pair  of  sleuths  that  ever  teamed 
up  at  Headquarters.  I've  often  heard  Scull  say, 
"Get  Cray's  slant  on  that.  If  he  says  'yes'  hop  to 
it." 

Inspector  Cray,  who  is  now  a  Deputy  Police  Com- 
missioner himself,  writes: 

"You  have  requested  me  to  undertake  the  hardest 
task  I  have  ever  been  called  upon  to  perform.  The 
great  fault  with  writers  of  history  is  that  their  per- 
sonal feelings  influence  their  writings.  I  frankly 
confess  that  my  sincere  admiration  and  friendship  for 
Guy  Scull  make  it  impossible  for  me  to  write  any- 
thing concerning  him  without  appearing  somewhat 
biased. 

"He  was  the  ideal  man  for  the  job  of  commanding 
the  Detective  Bureau.  He  was  the  greatest  searcher 
after  facts  I  ever  met.  His  deductions  were  always 
sound.  He  had  a  wonderful  tenacity  of  purpose.  Let 
him  become  convinced  that  he  was  on  the  right  track 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917     237 

to  solve  a  crime,  and  not  anything  could  swerve  him. 

"He  had  a  great  sense  of  justice  and  right,  a  won- 
derful memory,  and  would  often  surprise  me  with  a 
recital  of  the  facts  in  some  case  that  had  been  closed 
but  was  re-opened  for  further  investigation. 

"The  life  of  the  citizen  was  dear  to  him  and  in  con- 
sequence a  homicide  case  would  engross  all  his  at- 
tention. I  do  not  remember  a  case  of  homicide  oc- 
curring while  he  was  in  command  that  he  failed  to  go 
immediately  to  the  scene.  Any  hour  of  the  day  or 
night,  it  made  no  difference  to  him. 

"And  unassuming:  How  often  some  of  us  who 
accompanied  him  talk  of  it.  Amidst  the  excitement 
at^"nding  those  scenes  he  remained  as  calm  as  if  noth- 
ing had  happened.  Detectives  rushing  here  and  there, 
doctors,  friends  of  the  deceased,  bystanders,  all  ex- 
citement. Often  the  question  was  asked  'Who  is  that 
quiet  man  standing  there?'  Unless  kno\vn,  he  was 
never  suspected  of  being  the  'Boss.'  Nothing  escaped 
his  notice.  Often  when  everyone  was  'up  in  the  air' 
a  suggestion  from  him  would  clarify  the  situation. 
He  rarely  gave  orders,  mostly  always  suggestions, 
and  his  suggestions  were  always  respected,  because 
we  liked  him  and  because  we  knew  his  suggestions 
were  never  without  merit. 

"I  wish  I  could  write  more  about  him.  I  wish  I 
could  make  it  plain  just  what  a  man  he  was.  My 
literary  powers  are  limited,  and  I  can  only  express 
my  gratitude  for  having  this  opportunity  of  saying  a 
■word  in  memory  of  the  greatest  man  it  has  ever  been 


238  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

my  fortune  to  work  with — The  Hon.  Guy  H.  Scull." 
Inspector  Thomas  J.  Tunney,  Chief  of  the  famous 
Bomb  Squad  in  the  Woods  Administration,  was  an- 
other "Scull  man'*  in  the  Department.  Tunney's 
"mob,"  as  policemen  refer  to  different  squads,  lit- 
erally worked  their  heads  off  for  Scull,  and  as  a  rule 
the  Skipper  rode  with  them  on  the  chase  or  wasn't 
very  far  behind  them.  When  Scull  left  the  Depart- 
ment and  went  into  the  service,  Tunney  followed  him 
into  the  Army  Intelligence,  and  Sergeant  Barnitz, 
Tunney's  chief  subordinate,  into  the  Navy  Intelli- 
gence. 

Tunney  writes: 

"The  Major  had  a  wonderful  personality.  He  was 
calm  and  collected  at  all  times,  never  losing  his  tem- 
per. He  was  what  I  would  call  an  experienced  execu- 
tive, and  owing  to  his  absolute  fairness  and  pleasing 
manner,  secured  more  results  from  the  men  work- 
ing under  his  jurisdiction  than  any  other  superior  I 
had  the  pleasure  of  serving  for  over  twenty  years. 
He  had  a  very  keen  mind,  and  was  able  to  grasp  any 
situation,  however  complex  or  difficult.  He  was  very 
persistent,  never  giving  up  hope  of  solving  a  prob- 
lem until  every  possible  means  of  investigation  was 
exhausted.  The  best  evidence  of  this  is  the  important 
matters  that  were  accomplished  under  his  supervision, 
and  which  I  will  now  try  to  describe  as  briefly  as 

possible. 

"After  the  recent  European  war  broke  out  in  Au- 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917       239 

gust,  1914,  some  time  thereafter,  various  crimes  of 
violence  were  committed  in  New  York,  and  particu- 
larly on  merchant  vessels  in  the  harbors  and  rivers 
abounding  New  York. 

"One  of  the  cases  in  question  that  stands  out  very 
prominently  was  the  arrest  of  Lieut.  Robert  Fay  and 
his  associates.  Lieut.  Robert  Fay  was  on  leave  from 
the  Ro3'al  Imperial  German  Army  for  the  purpose  of 
coming  to  the  United  States  to  blow  up  ships  in  the 
harbors  of  the  United  States. 

"Fay  did  not  succeed  in  accomplishing  this,  al- 
tiiough  he  was  very  close  to  it.  He  had  four  mines 
or  bombs  already  finished  when  he  was  apprehended. 
These  bombs  would  blow  up  a  ship  instantly  and  sink 
everybody  on  board,  if  Fay  had  been  successful  in 
attaching  them.  At  the  capture  of  Flay,  I  particu- 
larly recollect  Major  Scull's  visit  to  Weehawken, 
N.  J.,  where  he  remained  with  the  other  men  and  my- 
self all  night.  He  was  always  thoughtful,  more  of 
others  than  himself,  for  he  arranged  and  paid  for  a 
meal  for  the  men  before  he  had  one  himself,  and  after 
they  were  through  he  and  I  had  some  coffee,  just 
to  keep  ourselves  awake. 

"Another  incident  was  that  in  which  Frank  Holt, 
alias  Muenter,  had  shot  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  in 
his  summer  home  at  Glen  Cove,  L.  I.,  and,  pre- 
vious to  that,  had  planted  a  bomb  in  the  Senate  wing 
in  the  Capitol  at  Washington.  Holt,  it  appears,  had 
written  to  his  wife  in  Texas,  saying  that  one  of  the 
ships  leaving  New  York  harbor  would  sink  after  a 


240  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

few  days'  sail  from  New  York.  This  made  it  imper- 
ative for  quick  action  and  to  locate,  if  possible,  the 
shipment  of  explosives  from  some  place  in  Long 
Island,  where  Holt  had  his  dynamite,  to  the  ships 
sailing,  as  mentioned  in  Holt's  letter.  It  had  been 
previously  ascertained  that  Holt  had  purchased  two 
hundred  pounds  of  dynamite  and  received  it  at  Syos- 
sett,  L.  I.,  but  we  were  unable  to  account  for  more 
than  six  of  these  sticks,  three  of  which  were  used 
in  the  bomb  at  Washington,  D.  C,  and  the  remain- 
ing three  he  had  in  his  possession  at  the  time  of  his 
arrest.  A  considerable  quantity  of  fuses  and  explo- 
sive caps  were  also  missing. 

"This  necessitated  a  search  of  all  railroad  stations 
in  Nassau  County,  as  Holt  was  known  to  use  an  au- 
tomobile in  his  movements.  Mr.  Scull  worked  all 
night,  traveling  from  one  station  to  another,  and  in 
many  cases  the  railroad  stations  were  closed  and  the 
agents  had  to  be  located  at  their  homes  and  awakened, 
and  then  they  visited  their  station  and  examined  their 
books.  A  funny  incident  occurred  in  Rockville  Cen- 
ter. About  four  o'clock  in  tiie  morning  we  were  all 
cold  and  hungry,  and  the  next  thing  we  found  to  an 
eating-place  was  a  German  bakery.  The  front  door 
was  closed  but  unlocked.  The  counter  on  the  inside 
was  filled  with  crullers  and  doughnuts.  Major  Scull 
and  several  of  the  men  entered  the  shop  and  spoke 
to  the  German  boss  who  was  upstairs  looking  out  of 
the  door,  requesting  him  to  make  some  coffee.    This 


mi 


]Sr.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917       241 

the  German  refused  to  do,  speaking  through  the  crack 
in  the  door,  and  then  locking  himself  in.  He  evi- 
dently thought  that  we  were  a  bunch  of  thieves  with 
an  automobile,  and  was  frightened  to  death.  We  then 
ate  a  number  of  crullers.  Major  Scull  leaving  fifty 
cents  on  the  counter  to  pay  for  them.  I  don't  know 
how  long  afterwards  the  German  came  downstairs, 
but  from  his  appearance  he  certainly  was  in  no 
hurry  to  show  himself. 

"We  arrived  in  New  York  that  morning,  about 
seven  o'clock.  The  major  got  off  at  his  home  at  79th 
Street,  between  Lexington  and  Third  Avenue,  and 
we  proceeded  to  get  a  shave  and  breakfast.  I  then 
visited  Police  Headquarters  to  attend  to  some  detail 
matters  and  to  give  orders  to  the  detectives  to  make 
further  investigations.  After  so  doing,  I  was  going 
home  to  have  some  sleep,  as  I  was  tired  out,  and  as 
I  was  leaving  the  building  about  8:45  a.  m.,  I  was 
surprised  to  see  Major  Scull  coming  in  to  start  work. 

"  'Major,'  I  said,  'I  thought  you  were  going  to  bed 
to  sleep.' 

"He  replied,  'I  am  too  busy.  I  haven't  time  to 
sleep,  but  you  go  home  and  get  to  bed.' 

"This  was  characteristic  of  him  on  numerous  oc- 
casions. He  was  always  one  of  the  first  to  arrive  on 
the  scene  of  a  crime  and  the  last  man  to  leave,  and 
the  first  man  in  the  office  in  the  morning.  He  was 
what  I  would  call  a  more  than  ordinary  public  of- 
ficial, and  there  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  but  that  the 


242  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

long  hours,  the  hardships,  and  close  attention  to  busi- 
ness undermined  his  health,  and  were  responsible  for 
his  premature  death." 

Most  persons  mentally  picture  a  policeman  as  an 
overfed,  flat-footed  person  with  a  heavy  jaw  and 
fierce  mustac^he.  I  can  remember  the  surprise,  almost 
consternation,  on  the  faces  of  some  citizens  who  came 
to  Headquarters  in  Arthur  Woods'  administration. 
They  would  actually  gasp  as  they  asked:  "You  don't 
mean  to  say  that  man  is  a  cop?"  Commissioner  Woods 
had  brought  in  to  Headquarters  and  had  placed  in 
the  various  branches  (detective  commands)  the  keen- 
est men  he  could  find  on  the  force,  and  strangely 
enough  many  of  them  in  citizen's  dress  did  not  look 
like  policemen. 

Captain  William  A.  Jones  was  one  of  these.  "Bill" 
Jones,  as  he  is  known  to  police  officers  far  and  wide, 
is  the  son  of  a  New  England  clergyman.  Tall,  spare 
of  frame,  dressed  in  sombre  black,  his  solemn  visage 
heightened  by  gold-rimmed  spectacles,  he  looks  more 
like  a  clergyman  himself  than  a  revolver  expert  and 
authority  on  gun-shot  wounds,  or  a  terror  to  foreign 
"gun-toters"  and  "stick-up"  men.  To  see  Scull  and 
"Capt.  Bill"  walk  up  the  street  together  in  those  days 
one  would  think  they  were  on  their  way  to  church  or 
prayer-meeting,  which  they  usually  weren't. 

"The  death  of  Major  Scull,"  writes  Captain  Jones, 
"gave  me  a  deep  sense  of  personal  loss,  as  it  must 
have  anyone  who  came  in  close  contact  with  his  per- 
sonality.   His  quiet  efficiency  and  untiring  devotion 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917       243 

to  any  work  he  undertook  were  an  inspiration  to  those 
who  worked  with  him. 

"When  Major  Scull  was  Deputy  Commissioner 
and  I  was  in  command  of  the  Third  Branch  of  the 
Detective  Bureau,  which  included  the  district  known 
as  'Harlem's  Little  Italy,'  the  work  of  overcoming  the 
different  gang  feuds  which  had  existed  for  j'^ears  and 
were  constantly  coming  to  the  surface,  presented  a 
difficult  problem. 

"Major  Scull  was  always  on  the  job,  day  or  night, 
and  his  keen  interest  in  the  situation  and  the  support 
and  assistance  he  gave  to  me  and  the  detectives  with 
me,  completely  broke  the  backbone  of  the  different 
clans  which  had  so  long  been  a  menace  to  the  com- 
munity. 

"Under  his  direction  I  worked  on  many  cases  where 
patience,  judgment  and  perseverence  were  the  qual- 
ities necessary  to  reach  a  solution  of  the  case,  and  he 
possessed  these  qualities  in  an  unusual  degree;  never 
letting  go  until  he  had  exhausted  every  clue.  One 
conspicuous  case  was  the  murder  of  Barnet  Baff,  the 
chicken  merchant,  who  was  shot  and  killed  in  the 
West  Washington  Market  on  November  24th,  1914. 
This  was  a  most  difficult  case.  Into  it  Major  Scull 
entered  with  his  usual  perseverance,  having  daily 
conferences  with  the  detectives  working  on  the  case, 
going  over  every  clue,  eliminating  some  and  follow- 
ing up  others,  until  he  had  reached  the  desired  end — 
that  of  the  conviction  of  the  murderers. 

"Another  case  that  stands  out  in  my  mind  was  the 


244  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

murder  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Nichols,  who  was  on  Sep- 
tember 8th,  1915,  strangled  in  her  home.  No.  4  East 
79th  Street,  by  four  men  who  went  there  with  the  in- 
tention of  robbing  her,  and  who  were  assisted  by  an 
inside  accomplice.  Three  and  the  inside  man  were 
arrested  and  convicted;  one  escaped  to  Finland,  was 
located  there,  but  could  not  be  extradited. 

"Both  the  Baff  and  the  Nichols  cases  required  more 
than  a  year  of  hard  work,  and  it  required  his  sending 
detectives  into  several  states,  one  to  France  and  Italy. 
At  times  the  results  seemed  discouraging,  but  Major 
Scull  never  lost  heart,  but  kept  at  it  untiringly  and 
with  a  spirit  I  have  never  seen  surpassed. 

"He  loved  his  work,  and  every  detective  under  him 
felt  impelled  to  do  his  best  when  the  Major  assigned 
him  to  any  dutJ^" 

The  police  microscope  discloses  few  meaner  forms 
of  predatory  life  nor  few  in  grosser  degradation  than 
the  "dope  pedler."  This  person  is  one  who  purchases 
habit-forming  drugs  in  lump  quantities  and  retails 
them  to  those  whose  appetite  is  such  they  will  com- 
mit crime  to  buy.  The  traffic  was  and  is  illegal  but 
it  is  still  a  gaining  one  and  when  Scull  went  to  Head- 
quarters as  Commissioner  Woods'  secretary  one  of  his 
assignments  was  the  command  of  Lieutenant  Scherb's 
"Dope  Squad,"  organized  by  Woods,  whose  duty  it 
was  to  cut  down  this  traffic  if  not  stop  it  entirely. 
Scull  and  Lieutenant  Scherb  never  stopped  it  nor  has 
anyone  else  before  or  since.  In  a  paper  advocating 
Federal  control  of  the  manufacture,  importation,  sale 


■     -  >^  c. 


c  .      ~ 

:       S  .  •  i  -^  5  ~ 

-^    -"  ^  I:  !E  .^  U 
^^      '      ^ « "^  . 

"^   *   ^  ^  ^*  ^ 

-*<     ^  '^  •?  ~  ;;  ■■'- 


X.   t 


r.  ~  -  ^-  =  . 


:f2itr? 


■;—'■<':.£    .  E 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917       245 

and  distribution  of  these  drugs  as  the  only  solution 
of  the  problem  Scull  admits  that  all  he  and  his  men 
did  was  little  better  than  "bailing  out  the  ocean  with 
a  bucket." 

Scull  knew  whereof  he  spoke.  He  had  worked  on 
the  streets  with  the  "Dope  Squad"  in  order  to  be- 
come acquainted  at  first  hand  with  the  drug  traffic, 
the  unfortunate  victims  and  the  pedlers.  Scull  soon 
came  to  know  the  tricks  of  the  pedlers  as  thoroughly  as 
the  detectives  themselves.  In  his  police  report,  urging 
the  passing  of  a  Federal  law,  he  describes  the  prac- 
tices of  the  pedlers  and  the  addicts  as  follows : 

"A  man  who  has  the  drugs  for  sale  will  stand  on 
the  corner,  just  idling,  say  in  front  of  a  saloon.  One 
of  his  customers  will  come  along  and  will  pay  him 
for  the  'dope.'  Of  course,  this  man  has  no  narcotics 
in  his  possession;  he  is  too  wise  for  that.  The  cus- 
tomer is  told  to  walk  around  the  street  and  look  out 
for  a  woman  with  blond  hair  who  will  be  walking 
toward  him.  He  does  this  and  as  he  passes  the  woman 
she  slips  him  a  'deck'  (small  paper  package  as  big  as 
a  paper  of  needles)  from  her  muff.  The  next  day 
the  customer  will  come  around  for  his  usual  supply, 
pay  the  man  on  the  corner,  and  will  be  told  to  stand 
in  front  of  a  certain  house  and  wait.  Presently  a 
cigarette  box  will  drop  from  an  upper  story  window ; 
he  will  find  a  'deck'  of  cocaine  in  it.  On  another  day 
he  will  be  told  to  go  around  to  a  certain  saloon  and 
ask  for  'Johnny.'  'Johnny'  will  tell  him  to  meet  him 
in  twenty  minutes  in  another  saloon.     In  the  mean- 


246  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

time  'Johnny'  goes  somew'here  and  obtains  tKe  'deck' 
of  cocaine. 

"A  less  clever  man  will  carry  'dope'  on  his  person 
in  all  kinds  of  ways.  He  will  have  the  false  fountain 
pen,  half  full  of  ink  and  half  full  of  'drugs';  he  will 
have  a  false  memorandum  book ;  he  will  carry  it  sewed 
in  the  lining  of  his  coat.  Sometimes  it  is  sold  in 
candy  falsely  made  up,  hollow  inside  and  packed  full 
of  dope;  sometimes  in  cigarettes,  or  in  hollowed-out 
rubber  heels  which  are  easily  detachable  from  the 
boot.    Women  will  conceal  it  in  their  hair. 

"Another  phase  of  this  traffic  in  drugs  is  concerned 
with  smuggling  the  drugs  into  prisons.  They  will 
use  any  extent  of  patience  in  order  to  get  the  drug 
to  the  inmates  of  the  different  jails.  Of  course,  the 
profits  are  enormous.  One  man  used  to  split  post- 
cards, put  the  white  powder  between  the  two  parts 
and  cleverly  paste  the  parts  together  again,  write  a 
message  on  it,  and  address  it  to  the  person  in  jail. 
Another  trick  of  his  was  to  remove  about  twenty  or 
thirty  pages  of  a  magazine  and  paste  the  dope  right 
in  the  binding,  then  put  the  pages  back  again.  Some- 
times he  would  write  a  letter  on  a  piece  of  paper  that 
had  been  soaked  with  some  narcotic  solution,  so  that 
the  person  receiving  it  could  chew  the  paper  and  get 
some  effect  from  the  narcotic." 

Scull's  office  on  the  second  floor  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs  was  the  center  of  interest  for  a  large  part  of 
the  day  and  night.  At  night  his  were  usually  the 
only  lights  burning  on  this  floor.     Something  of  in- 


N.  Y.  C.  POLICE  DEPT.— 1914-1917       247 

terest,  something  big  or  little,  was  always  under 
scrutiny  here.  One  would  usually  find  someone 
from  the  P.  C.'s  office  here,  two  or  three  deputies, 
an  inspector,  a  captain  or  two  and  a  stream  of  de- 
tectives coming  and  going  and  they  all  appeared  to 
be  taking  enjoyment  in  their  work.  There  was  a 
certain  keenness  of  interest,  brightness  of  eye  and  an 
altogether  wholesome,  healthy  tone  around  Scull's 
office.  Guy  Scull  may  not  have  been  the  greatest 
detective  officer  in  the  country,  nor  the  most  bril- 
liant, but  there  never  was  a  more  conscientious  head 
of  a  detective  force,  a  more  honest  one,  or  one  who 
was  better  liked  by  his  men,  or  who  did  more  for 
them  or  who  got  more  out  of  them  in  service  to  the 
people. 


Chapter  XVII 
THE  WORLD'S  WAR— 1918-1920 

Everyone  at  Police  Headquarters  took  it  for 
granted  that  the  Fifth  Deputy  Police  Commissioner 
would  enter  the  service  as  soon  as  he  could  get  leave 
from  his  duties  in  the  Detective  Bureau.  The  Mit- 
chel  administration  was  drawing  to  a  close,  the  cam- 
paign for  re-election  was  on,  but  whether  or  not  the 
Mayor  was  re-elected  Headquarters  knew  it  would 
take  more  than  the  stock  argument  of  duty  to  the 
city  to  hold  Scull  much  longer.  Scull  offered  his 
services  to  the  Government  in  November,  1917,  and 
on  December  22  he  received  notification  by  wire  that 
he  had  been  nominated  for  a  captaincy  in  the  Army. 
Hundreds  of  less  capable  men  had  been  commis- 
sioned majors  and  colonels,  but  if  this  disturbed  the 
equanimity  of  the  Skipper's  mind,  no  one  ever  knew 
it.  Only  two  or  three  of  his  intimates  were  aware 
that  he  was  disappointed.  Not  that  he  wanted  rank. 
He  wanted  authority.  He  felt  that  he  had  already 
rendered  considerable  service  to  the  Government  and 
to  both  France  and  England  in  his  capacity  as  Dep- 
uty Police  Commissioner,  and  he  had.  Very  few 
men  had  accomplished  what  he  and  his  squads  of 
detectives  had  done  in  foiling  the  plans  of  German 
secret  agents,  in  protecting  lives  of  non-combatants, 

24,9 


WORLD    WAR  249 

in  protecting  supplies  of  the  Allies,  and  in  fact  sav- 
ing millions  of  dollars  worth  of  allied  shipping  here 
in  the  Port  of  New  York,  destined  for  overseas, 
which  was  a  rich  prize  and  the  object  of  a  hundred 
plots  directed  from  the  German  foreign  office. 
Nevertheless,  he  took  what  he  could  get  and  accepted 
the  commission  the  Government  offered  him. 

The  following  is  a  copy  of  the  notice  he  received 
from  the  War  Department  that  he  had  been  ap- 
pointed : 

Washington,  D,  C,  Dec.  24,  1917. 

Guy  Hamilton  Scull, 
156  East  79th  Street, 
New  York. 

You  have  been  appointed  Captain  Quartermaster 
Reserve  Period.  Wire  acceptance  giving  full  name 
and  rank.  McCain 

This  message  came  in  so  many  different  forms  that 
Scull  finally  became  exceedingly  annoyed.  Each 
message  he  received  he  would  formally  acknowledge 
and  accept.  He  showed  the  collection  to  me  one 
day,  saying: 

"Gosh.  I  guess  they  want  to  impress  me  with  my 
job.  If  I  got  this  ton  of  paper  with  a  Captain's 
commission,  I'd  a  been  buried  if  they  had  slipped  me 
a  majority.    The  Lord  do  provide." 

After  he  had  accepted  his  commission,  he  began 
receiving  orders  where  to  report  and  like  the  an- 
nouncement of  his  appointment,  they  made  such  a 


250  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

bulky  pile  of  correspondence  that  he  couldn't  carry 
it  in  his  pocket.  He  would  receive  one  order  one  day, 
and  the  next  day  a  different  one  canceling  the  first. 
This  so  got  on  his  nerves  that  he  told  his  wife  that  he 
didn't  think  he  wanted  to  try  and  work  in  a  service 
where  there  was  so  much  red  tape. 

Scull,  however,  finally  landed  in  Washington,  and 
after  some  delay  was  given  a  desk  in  the  Quarter- 
master's Department  and  assigned  to  the  task  of  run- 
ning down  grafters  and  crooks  in  the  contract  and 
supply  business.  Before  his  family  joined  him  he 
lived  for  a  time  with  the  writer.  Lodgings  were 
difficult  to  obtain  in  Washington  in  those  days.  War 
workers  packed  the  city.  Houses  were  overcrowded. 
Living  acconmiodations,  both  hotels,  boarding-houses 
and  residences,  were  taxed  beyond  their  capacity. 
The  writer  at  that  time  was  working  with  Francis 
P.  Garvan,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Investigations  of 
the  Alien  Property  Custodian,  and  the  latter  in  the 
emergency  had  been  forced  to  lease  a  family  resi- 
dence at  2132  B  Street,  N.  W.,  to  have  a  place  to 
sleep  when  he  was  in  town.  Here  for  several  weeks 
during  a  hot  summer,  Mr.  Garvan  gave  us  quarters. 
The  house  was  always  open  to  Mr.  Garvan's  friends, 
and  there  was  always  a  quota  of  officers  and  civilians 
in  the  Government  service  stopping  there.  Scull  and 
I  usually  met  at  breakfast  and  were  in  our  respective 
offices  all  day.  When  not  detained  at  the  office,  we 
had  dinner  together  in  the  evening  and  passed  the 
time  until  retiring  sitting  in  the  parks  or  strolling 


WORLD    WAR  251 

through  the  quiet  streets,  trying  to  keep  cool.  Dur- 
ing these  hours  together  we  talked  of  many  things. 
We  had  been  in  newspaper  work  together,  and  had 
been  closely  associated  at  Police  Headquarters  in 
New  York  through  the  Woods  administration.  The 
problems  of  the  old  police  administration  was  one 
topic  we  discussed,  and  the  military  tactics  as  de- 
veloped overseas  another.  But  save  for  a  com- 
plaint or  two  at  army  red  tape  that  prevented  him 
from  getting  a  staff  of  experienced  operators,  not 
once  did  Scull  in  all  this  time  refer  to  any  of  the 
cases  he  was  working  on.  As  much  as  he  knew  and 
as  close  as  we  had  been  together  in  other  work  of 
this  kind,  never  did  he  take  me  into  his  confidence. 
This  was  Scull's  way.  His  lips  were  sealed,  and  the 
confidence  placed  in  him  by  his  superiors  was  locked 
tightly  and  safely  within  himself. 

Later  he  left  Washington,  being  transferred  to  the 
Northeastern  Department,  and  finishing  this  work  in 
and  around  Boston,  he  returned  to  Washington,  se- 
cured a  small  house,  and  moved  his  wife  and  small 
family  down  from  New  York.  I  found  him  one  day 
at  his  new  quarters,  blouse  off,  trying  to  put  on  a 
new  set  of  rank  insignia. 

"How  do  you  stick  these  darn  things  on  anyway?" 
was  his  greeting. 

I  picked  up  one  of  them  to  examine  it,  and  found 
it  a  gold  leaf  instead  of  the  twin  silver  bars.  That 
was  his  first  and  only  allusion  to  the  fact  that  he  had 
been  promoted. 


252  GUY    HAMILTON    SCULL 

One  of  his  associates  says: 

"I  had  never  seen  him  or  come  into  contact  with 
him  until  the  early  spring  of  1917,  when  he  was  sta- 
tioned at  the  Northeastern  Department  as  an  In- 
telligence Officer,  and  I  had  him  pointed  out  to  me 
as  he  stood  before  the  open  fire  in  the  Tennis  and 
Racquet  Club  in  Boston.  In  addition  to  the  halo  of 
romance  which  surrounded  him,  he  had  the  additional 
attraction  which  the  Army  Officer  in  uniform  has  to 
one  still  a  civilian,  in  wartime.  His  shy  reserve,  how- 
ever, permitted  only  a  perfunctory  acquaintance  at 
this  time. 

"In  the  summer  of  1918,  I  went  into  the  Army, 
and  was  stationed  at  Washington,  where  although 
in  a  different  department,  I  saw  a  great  deal  of  the 
Skipper  in  the  late  afternoons  at  the  Metropolitan 
Club.  He  used  to  spend  an  hour  there  every  after- 
noon from  about  5  to  6  o'clock,  seat  himself  in  a 
comer  and  bury  himself  in  the  latest  stock  market 
news.  I  used  to  join  him  there  almost  every  after- 
noon, and  we  would  talk  over  the  market  situation 
and  protest  bitterly  to  each  other  against  Prohibi- 
tion. These  little  afternoon  sessions  usually  wound 
up  by  our  going  to  the  bar  and  having  a  glass  of  cider 
together.  You  can  imagine  our  pleasure  when  for 
one  well-remembered  period  of  two  weeks  we  dis- 
covered that  the  Club  cider  had  a  very  decided  'kick' 
in  it.  We  kept  this  entirely  to  ourselves  as  a  very 
dark  secret  and  consumed  it  in  sufficient  quantity  so 


WORLD    WAR  253 

that  for  those  happy  two  weeks,  each  of  us  actually 
left  the  Club  in  a  glow. 

"Skipper  Scull  was  the  most  careless  man  about 
his  uniform  whom  I  think  I  have  ever  seen,  and  yet 
you  only  had  to  glance  at  him  to  see  that  he  was  a 
man  of  unusual  distinction.  His  trousers  always 
looked  as  though  they  would  drop  off  at  the  next 
step,  and  his  shirt  invariably  showed  below  the  bot- 
tom button  of  his  blouse.  Whenever  Mrs.  Scull  took 
him  out  to  dinner,  which  was  very  much  more  often 
than  he  wished,  the  one  ceremony  that  had  to  be  ac- 
complished was  the  shining  of  his  shoes,  which  was 
only  done  at  such  times.  It  didn't  require  the  talent 
of  a  Sherlock  Holmes  to  know  when  Guy  Scull  was 
going  out  to  dinner,  as  on  such  evenings  he  would 
always  spend  a  growling  five  minutes  in  the  boot- 
black's chair  at  the  Metropolitan  Club  having  a 
party  shine  put  on  his  shoes.  Those  shoes  were  most 
peculiar,  as  by  the  next  day  all  trace  of  the  shine 
had  vanished  and  they  were  ready  for  action  again. 

"Scull  was  Chief  of  the  Military  Intelligence  Di- 
vision, General  Staff,  known  as  the  Graft  and  Fraud 
Section  (M.  I.  13),  and  was  charged  with  the  detec- 
tion and  prevention  of  graft  and  fraud  in  or  con- 
nected with  the  Army.  Skipper  started  under  Gen- 
eral Goethals  to  do  this  sort  of  work  for  the  Quarter- 
master Corps,  and  due  to  his  native  ability  and  his 
invaluable  training  as  Chief  of  the  Detective  Force 
of  the  New  York  Police  Department,  his  work  was 
such  a  success  that  in  August,  1918,  the  scope  of 


254  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

his  work  was  enlarged  to  include  the  entire  Army. 
His  force  was  the  finest  Secret  Service  force  which 
the  country  has  ever  seen,  and  the  results  which  he 
achieved  in  his  field,  which  covered  the  entire  United 
States  of  America,  were  little  short  of  remarkable. 
Our  one  regret  was  that  M.  I.  13  could  not  have  been 
started  earlier,  as  it  would  have  been  a  very  potent 
factor  in  putting  a  stop  to  a  great  deal  of  the  un- 
necessary waste  and  extravagance  which  marked  the 
era  of  the  entering  of  the  United  States  into  the 
War. 

"I  have  never  known  anyone  who  had  such  a  lov- 
able nature,  but  the  quality  which  impressed  me  most 
in  him  was  his  absolute  and  undeviating  sense  of  jus- 
tice and  fairness.  If  a  man  was  a  crook,  whether  a 
friend  of  his  or  not,  he  w^ould  prosecute  him  to  the 
utmost.  But,  if  the  accused  person  were  in  the  right, 
he  would  back  him  to  the  limit  of  his  power  and 
ability,  which  were  tremendous." 

Another  officer  in  M.  I.  13  who  was  associated 
with  Scull  in  Washington,  says: 

"Major  Guy  Scull's  life  and  adventures  will  be 
discussed  whenever  tv/o  or  more  mutual  friends 
gather.  And  thus  the  memory  of  this  truly  remark- 
able man  will  be  kept  ever  green  for  years  and 
years  to  come. 

"Robert  Ingersoll,  standing  at  the  grave  of  his 
brother,  said:  'If  each  one  to  whom  he  did  some  lov- 
ing kindness  were  to  drop  a  bloom  upon  this  grave, 
he  would  sleep  tonight  beneath  an  avalanche  of  flow- 


WORLD    WAR  255 

ers.*  And  so  if  each  friend  were  to  write  something 
— a  recollection  or  a  little  story  concerning  the  late 
Major — many  volumes  would  have  to  be  published. 

"Skipper  Scull  had  fewer  enemies  and  more  gen- 
uine friends  than  any  man  of  my  acquaintance.  His 
friends  are  to  be  found  in  every  clime,  in  every  land ; 
his  enemies — well,  they  must  have  all  preceded  him 
to  the  grave  for  I  don't  recall  ever  having  heard  an 
unkind  word  said  against  him.  I  have  heard  him  de- 
scribed thus:  *A  swell  guy,'  'a  He-Man,'  'a  genuine 
fellow,'  'a  real  fellow,'  *a  true  friend,'  'a  sj^lendid  gen- 
tleman.' I  have  frequently  referred  to  him  as  'one 
of  the  most  lovable  men  I  ever  met.' 

"One  of  the  first  lessons  I  learned  from  the  Major 
was  that  we  were  not  to  direct  the  men  in  the  field 
as  to  how  they  should  proceed  in  their  investigations, 

"  'The  man  in  the  field  is  on  the  ground,'  said  the 
Major,  'He  is  in  a  better  position  to  size  up  the  sit- 
uation than  we  are.'  That  might  not  have  been  ex- 
actly military,  but  it  produced  results. 

"  'When  we  go  after  grafters  against  the  Govern- 
ment,' said  the  Major  at  another  time,  'we  should 
not  allow  cost  of  an  investigation  or  criminal  action 
to  deter  us.  When  you  start  an  investigation  go  right 
through  with  it  until  you  place  the  guilty  parties  be- 
hind the  bars  or  else  clear  up  the  suspicion.' 

"The  Major  had  little  faith  in  the  so-called  effi- 
ciency reports  on  officers.  'I  don't  go  much  on  these 
reports,'  said  the  Major,  'a  poor  devil  may  work  his 
head  off  and  be  unfortunate  enough  to  get  under 


256  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

some  fellow  who  has  taken  a  personal  dislike  for  him 
and  he  gets  a  poor  rating.  Another  fellow,  the  most 
inefficient  officer  in  the  world,  may  shower  favors  on 
his  superior  officer  and  he  will  be  given  a  high  rat- 
ing. No,  don't  take  these  efficiency  reports  too 
seriously.' 

"No  officer  was  ever  accorded  more  loyal  support 
than  was  Major  Scull.  I  am  quite  convinced  that 
the  men  and  women  under  him  took  the  attitude  that 
they  were  working  for  Major  Scull,  rather  than  for 
the  Government.  The  result  of  their  efforts  under 
Major  Scull,  and  later  under  Major  Peters,  is  in- 
deed a  tribute  not  only  to  these  two  splendid  officers 
but  a  marked  distinction  of  services  rendered  faith- 
fully and  courageously  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States.  These  men  matched  their  wits  with 
the  cleverest  crooks  in  the  land,  and  the  fact  that  over 
three  thousand  arrests  were  made  and  more  than 
$10,000,000  recovered  for  the  Government  is  suffi- 
cient evidence  of  the  earnestness  of  these  men." 

Another  officer  in  M.  I.  13,  an  experienced  news- 
paper correspondent  before  the  war,  writes: 

"It  is  a  pity  that  the  veil  of  secrecy  must  forever 
conceal  the  war  record  of  Guy  H.  Scull— a  record 
that  is  written  large  and  legibly  in  the  hidden  ar- 
chives of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division  of  the 
United  States  Army.  It  is  a  record  that  reflects 
upon  a  gentleman  whose  real  character  and  capacity 
were  appreciated  and  admired  by  his  close  associates, 


WORLD    WAR  257 

who  were  undeceived  as  to  these  virtues  by  a  becom- 
ing modesty  and  a  retiring  disposition. 

"Mild-mannered,  easy-going,  agreeable  in  the  hum- 
drum, ordinary  pursuits  of  life,  Scull  was  an  alto- 
gether different  character  as  regards  lawlessness  and 
criminals.  He  was  indomitable,  relentless  as  a  man- 
hunter,  yet  his  methods  were  as  creditable  to  his  high 
conception  of  honor  as  they  were  effective  in  bring- 
ing results. 

"M.  I.  13,  otherwise  the  Graft  and  Fraud  Section 
of  the  Military  Intelligence  Division,  owed  its  origin 
and  development  to  Scull.  I  am  familiar  with  its 
inception  and  creation.  Scull,  by  natural  bent,  train- 
ing and  experience,  an  admirable  Intelligence  Officer, 
was  assigned  to  the  Quartermaster  Corps,  under 
General  George  W.  Goethals,  to  keep  an  eye  on 
crooked  contractors  who  were  waxing  rich  in  swin- 
dling the  Government. 

"Scull  began  at  the  beginning.  He  realized  the 
importance  of  covering  the  great  Quartermaster  De- 
pots, where  supplies  for  the  Army  were  purchased, 
stored  and  distributed.  Within  a  very  short  time 
after  his  assignment.  Scull's  activity  began  to  bring 
results,  but  the  effectiveness  of  his  work  was  hin- 
dered by  the  need  of  cooperation  and  funds. 

"General  Goethals  was  so  favorably  impressed 
with  the  progress  and  results  of  Scull's  single-handed 
efforts  that  he  called  for  an  estimate  of  the  cost  of 
enlarging  the  field.  It  was  my  good  fortune  to  be 
in  the  Quartermaster's  Corps  at  the  time,  and  I  had 


258  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  further  good  fortune  to  become  associated  with 
Scull. 

"The  estimates  as  to  the  cost  of  expanding  Scull's 
field  in  the  Q.M.C.  were  submitted  to  the  General 
Staff,  with  the  approval  of  General  Goethals,  and  the 
Staff  was  so  well  impressed  with  his  accomplish- 
ments in  the  Quartermaster's  Corps  that  it  was  de- 
cided to  expand  the  service  to  include  all  other  corps 
of  the  Army — Engineers,  Medical,  Ordnance,  Air- 
craft, and  to  coordinate  the  work  under  the  Military 
Intelligence  Division. 

"Scull  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  Graft  and 
Fraud  Section  of  the  M.  I.  D.  thus  created,  and  again 
fortune  favored  me.  I  followed  him,  and  it  was  an 
inspiration  to  observe  the  zeal  and  determination  with 
which  Scull  labored  to  achieve  the  results  that  soon 
made  M.I. 13  one  of  the  effective  units  of  the  Mili- 
tary Intelligence  Division. 

"As  an  officer  in  charge  of  the  section,  Scull  en- 
joyed the  confidence  and  love  of  every  one  of  his 
subordinates  and  held  a  place  in  the  respect  and  re- 
gard of  his  superiors  that  contributed  to  the  success 
of  the  work. 

"In  this  humble  effort  to  pay  tribute  to  his  mem- 
ory, I  may  add  parenthetically,  that  from  a  strictly 
personal  experience  I  was  made  to  realize  and  ap- 
preciate the  fairness  and  impartiality  of  Guy  H. 
Scull  and  in  a  long  experience  I  have  never  met  nor 
known  a  person  more  entitled  to  admiration  for  these 
sterling  attributes." 


WASm.VC'ION,     I'lis 


WORLD    WAR  259 

Such  was  the  volume  of  work  intrusted  to  Scull's 
bureau  that  he  continued  at  it  for  several  months 
after  the  armistice  and  it  was  not  until  the  following 
May  that  he  felt  compelled  to  leave  the  service  and 
go  back  to  civil  life.  He  had,  like  many  others,  sac- 
rificed opportunities  for  personal  advancement  in  or- 
der to  give  his  services  to  the  Government  in  work 
that  he  felt  he  was  qualified  to  do.  He  had  drawn 
upon  his  slender  personal  means  to  fortify  his  small 
army  pay  against  the  demands  made  upon  it  in  the 
support  of  his  family,  and  it  was  because  of  these 
family  obligations  that  he  was  forced  to  retire  from 
the  service  he  liked  so  well  and  go  back  to  the  hum- 
drum existence  of  making  a  living. 

That  his  resignation  was  received  with  regret  is 
evidenced  by  letters  written  at  that  time  by  officers  of 
high  and  low  rank,  from  Brigadier  General  Marl- 
borough Churchill,  Director  of  Military  Intelligence, 
down,  a  few  of  which  are  printed  below: 

WAR    DEPARTMENT 

Office  of  the  Director  of  Military  Intelligence 

Washington,  May  14,  1919. 
My  dear  Major  Scull: 

I  wish  to  express  to  you  the  regret,  both  personal 
and  official,  I  feel  at  being  obliged  to  sign  your 
discharge  papers.  Colonel  Masteller  tells  me  that 
for  both  personal  and  business  reasons  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  you  to  leave  the  service. 


260  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

When  you  came  to  the  Military  Intelligence  Di- 
vision there  was  considerable  possibility  that  every 
bureau  and  department  of  the  Government  con- 
cerned with  the  letting  of  contracts  might  start  up 
a  separate  agency  to  investigate  graft  and  fraud. 
Under  your  able  guidance  the  matter  was  so  central- 
ized that  duplication  of  effort  was  avoided  and  the 
matter  handled  in  such  a  way  as  to  best  safeguard 
the  interests  of  the  United  States.  I  have  been  as- 
tonished at  seeing  the  figures  representing  the  actual 
amount  of  money  restored  to  the  Government,  and 
my  imagination  has  been  stimulated  by  thinking  of 
the  possible  financial  equivalent  of  the  graft  and 
fraud  which  your  section  has  prevented  in  an  indirect 
way. 

I  wish  to  go  on  record  as  Director  of  Military  In- 
telligence as  stating  officially  that  the  work  done  by 
you  and  the  officers,  non-commissioned  officers  and 
agents  under  your  charge  has  been  of  immense  value 
to  the  Government. 

In  the  event  of  another  war,  or  any  emergency  re- 
quiring the  letting  of  a  large  number  of  Government 
contracts,  I  shall  take  pleasure  in  recommending  that 
the  work  of  investigating  graft  and  fraud  be  given 
place  under  your  direction. 

With  kindest  personal  regards,  I  am,    . 

Yery  sincerely  yours, 
(Signed)   M.  Chuhchill. 


Major  G.  H.  Scull, 

Military  Intelligence  Division, 

Washington,  D.  C. 


WORLD    WAR  261 

WAR  DEPARTMENT 

Headquarters  Central  Department 

Chicago,  May  16,  1919. 
Major  Guy  H.  Scull, 
Graft  Section,  Military  Intelligence, 
Washington,  D.  C. 
My  dear  Major: 

It  is  with  regret  that  I  learn  that  you  are  about  to 
be  discharged  from  the  Army.  Your  words  of  appre- 
ciation of  the  service  of  the  Graft  Section,  Central 
Department,  is  but  another  evidence  of  the  kind  per- 
sonal interest  which  you  have  taken  in  all  our  activi- 
ties and  which  has  done  so  much  to  make  the  work 
a  pleasure. 

I  would  be  ungrateful,  indeed,  if  I  did  not  express 
to  you  my  sincere  thanks  for  your  many  favors  and 
my  association  with  you  during  the  war  will  always 
be  a  pleasant  memory. 

I  trust  I  may  hear  from  you  occasionally  and  if 
fate  brings  you  to  Chicago,  that  you  will  look  me  up. 

With  very  best  wishes,  I  am. 

Yours  sincerely, 
(Signed)  Francis  D.  Hanna. 

WAR   DEPARTMENT 

Office  of  Military  Intelligence 
Boatmen's  Bank  Building 

St.  Louis,  Mo.,  May  16,  1919. 
Major  Guy  H.  Scull, 
156  West  79th  St., 
New  York  City. 
My  dear  Major: 

Yours  of  the  13th  came  this  morning  and  contained 
the  saddest  tidings  that  have  reached  this   office   in 


262  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

many  a  moon.  We  were  all  very  sorry  to  hear  of 
your  retirement  from  the  service,  and  want  to  assure 
you  that  we  more  than  appreciate  the  manner  in 
which  you  handled  our  affairs,  and  the  way  in  which 
you  always  backed  us  up  in  every  situation. 

If  I  am  able  to  go  over  to  New  Haven  in  June,  as 
I  trust  I  will  be  able  to,  I  will  certainly  endeavor 
to  see  you  on  my  way  through  New  York. 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

(Signed)  T.  S.  Maffitt, 

Captain,  U.  S.  A. 


Chapter  XVIII 
CEDARHURST— 1920 

The  Sculls  in  1920  decided  that  their  New  York 
apartment  was  too  confining  for  a  pair  of  active 
small  boys  so  they  found  a  house  in  Cedarhurst,  Long 
Island,  in  the  middle  of  a  quiet  colony  of  their 
friends. 

"The  Sculls  moved  into  the  house  next  door  to 
us  on  'The  Lane'  in  the  autumn  of  1920,"  writes  the 
wife  of  an  old  friend  of  Guy's.  "My  hus- 
band had  known  Guy  in  Boston  when  they  were  boys, 
but  I  had  never  met  him  until  just  before  they  came 
here  to  live,  and  I  had  only  met  Nancy  casually.  We 
were  in  the  dining  car  en  route  to  Bar  Harbor  late 
in  the  summer  of  1920  when  my  husband  suddenly 
said,  'There  is  your  neighbor  to  be,  Guy  Scull.'  He 
was  only  a  few  tables  away  so  that  I  had  an  excellent 
opportunity  of  studying  his  face.  Guy  was  an  un- 
usually distinguished  looking  man,  with  grayish  hair 
and  keen  eyes,  and  an  expression  that  combined 
force,  even  sternness,  with  kindliness  and  humor. 
The  next  day  crossing  over  to  Bar  Harbor  on  the 
boat  we  had  a  long  talk  with  Guy  and  he  asked  us  a 
great  many  questions  about  suburban  life  which  we 
tried  to  answer  both  truthfully  and  satisfactorily!  I 
remember  wondering  at  the  time  if  our  simple  life  on 


264  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

the  little  lane  in  Cedarhurst  would  appeal  to  a  man 
who  had  wandered  all  over  the  world,  and  had  lived 
such  an  interesting  life  full  of  adventure.  I  need  not 
have  worried  about  that  for  I  have  rarely  seen  any- 
one happier  or  more  contented  than  Guy  was  in  his 
home  in  Cedarhurst. 

*'A  month  or  two  later  Nancy  and  Guy  and  the 
two  boys,  Guy  and  David,  arrived  from  New  York 
and  settled  next  door  to  us,  and  we  very  soon  drifted 
into  a  delightful  friendship. 

"We  all  had  great  fun  together.  It  was  an  un- 
usually snowy  winter  and  we  went  on  straw  rides, 
and  pulled  our  children  all  over  the  country  on  sleds 
and  looked,  not  always  in  vain,  for  hills  to  slide  down. 
Guy  loved  the  winter  life  and  spent  whole  days  dig- 
ging out  the  snow  drifts  in  'The  Lane'  with  a  gang 
of  admiring  small  boys  and  making  slides  and  mar- 
velous snow  men  for  Guy  and  David.  Guy  was  won- 
derful with  children.  I  remember  so  vividly  some 
of  the  late  afternoons  I  spent  in  the  Scull's  living 
room  with  the  lamps  lit  and  a  fire  burning,  and  my 
children  and  Guy  and  David  on  the  floor  playing  the 
most  entrancing  games  with  Guy  senior.  Nancy  and 
I  were  an  appreciative  audience  and  no  one  paid  the 
slightest  attention  to  us.  Sometimes  they  played  a 
thrilling  game  called  'Hippopotamus,'  but  their  very 
favorite  was  called  'Going  to  Bar  Harbor,'  and  they 
showed  as  much  enthusiasm  over  it  the  fiftieth  time 
as  they  did  the  first  time  it  was  perpetrated. 

"People  of  all  ages  were  drawn  to  Guy,  and  he 


CEDARHURST  265 

seemed  to  enjoy  the  informal  social  life  here  in  the 
country.  In  his  own  home  he  was  at  his  best  and 
with  Nancy  and  the  children  he  was  absolutely  happy. 
The  devotion  and  understanding  between  those  four 
was  a  very  wonderful  thing  to  see. 

"In  the  spring  he  took  up  golf  and  became  very  en- 
thusiastic about  the  game,  playing  most  of  Satur- 
days and  Sundays.  Sometimes  he  would  stop  in  here 
on  his  way  back  from  the  links — my  husband  would 
be  working  in  the  garden  and  Nancy  and  I  would  be 
comfortably  ensconced  in  steamer  chairs  making  help- 
ful suggestions.  Guy  would  describe  his  afternoon's 
experiences  with  delightful  humor,  and  then  he 
would  inquire  politely  for  'the  crops,'  and  eventually 
he  would  drift  into  a  heated  political  discussion.  My 
husband  and  Guy  enjoyed  their  political  differences 
more  than  almost  anything  in  that  delightful  year. 
One  could  always  start  Guy  off  by  a  slight  refer- 
ence to  suffrage  and  an  argument  of  that  nature  was 
always  worth  listening  to.  He  usually  ended  by 
sighing,  and  saying  in  no  uncertain  tones,  'The  whole 
world  is  going  to  pieces.' 

"We  often  spent  our  evenings  together — we 
would  wander  over  to  the  Scull's  porch  after  dinner 
and  sometimes  Guy  would  fefel  in  the  mood  and 
would  tell  us  wonderful  tales  of  his  travels.  One 
night  he  told  us  all  about  his  cruise  on  the  May- 
flower. He  had  a  rare  gift  for  story-telling  and  he 
made  us  feel  the  thrill  of  that  adventure  from  start 
to  finish. 


266  GUY   HAMILTON    SCULL 

"The  Sunday  before  Guy  died  was  a  clear  crisp 
autumn  day.  We  all  spent  the  afternoon  outdoors — 
Guy  on  the  golf  links — and  late  in  the  afternoon  we 
stopped  in  at  the  Scull's  for  tea  and  sat  around  for 
a  long  time  talking.    That  day  is  a  pleasant  memory. 

"Guy  died  on  Friday,  October  29th,  at  St.  Luke's 
Hospital.  We  lost  a  friend  whose  place  no  one  can 
ever  fill,  and  we  count  it  a  very  great  privilege  to 
have  known  him  intimately  for  one  delightful  year." 

Scull  was  ill  but  three  days  and  it  was  not  until 
noon  of  the  day  he  died,  October  29th,  that  he  knew 
there  was  no  hope.  His  thought  then  was  for  his  two 
boys,  their  mother  and  his  mother;  not  for  himself. 
He  tried  in  every  way  he  could  to  cheer  his  wife,  he 
even  "kidded"  the  doctor's  opinion,  to  show  her  that 
his  old  strength  and  courage  still  remained  and  that 
he  could  fight  and  win  by  himself.  No  one  but  the 
surgeons  knew  the  fight  he  made  and  they  still 
wonder  today  at  the  stamina  and  reserve  strength 
left  in  this  man  who  could  put  up  such  a  battle  for 
his  life  as  he  did. 

The  virulent  infection  which  caused  his  death  be- 
gan with  a  slight  carbuncle  on  the  end  and  inside  of 
his  nose  the  Tuesday  before.  In  fact  he  was  playing 
golf  the  same  afternoon,  although  the  following  day, 
Wednesday,  he  and  his  wife  went  to  town  in  the 
afternoon  to  see  their  own  doctor.  They  were  so  sure 
of  returning  a  few  hours  later  that  they  made  no 
preparations  for  being  away  longer  than  a  night  at 
the  most.     The  infection,  however,   progressed  so 


CEDARHURST  267 

rapidly  that  when  they  went  to  St.  Luke's  Hospital 
Thursday  morning  Scull's  face  had  swollen  beyond 
recognition.  The  pain  and  discomfort  were  intense. 
The  operation  which  was  thought  might  be  helpful 
brought  no  relief,  the  infection  had  gone  too  far. 

Scull  rallied  Friday  morning,  however,  and  those 
at  his  bedside  thought  that  the  danger  was  over.  He 
became  unconscious  Friday  noon  and  died  that  eve- 
ning about  ten  o'clock.  Dr.  Fellowes  Davis,  one  of 
Guy's  closest  friends,  was  with  him  to  the  end. 

This  strong  courageous  life  which  took  such  full 
enjoyment  in  so  short  a  span,  matching  its  strength 
against  all  comers  in  all  kinds  of  adventures  was 
snuffed  out  suddenly  and  almost  without  warning  by 
an  insignificant  pimple  on  the  end  of  his  nose. 

The  news  of  his  death  came  with  terrific  sudden- 
ness. All  of  the  newspapers  in  Xew  York  and  Bos- 
ton carried  column  stories  on  his  life.  The  body  was 
taken  the  following  day  to  Boston  and  on  Monday, 
November  1st,  Scull  was  buried  in  Mount  Auburn 
Cemetery  after  a  most  impressive  service  in  the 
Chapel  there,  attended  by  many  of  his  lifelong 
friends,  the  Colonel  of  his  old  regiment,  the  Rough 
Riders,  being  one  of  the  pallbearers. 


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